Leaving Texas early this morning and should be back in New Jersey by midafternoon in time for New Year’s.

Of course, just as I’m leaving, a story like this breaks. This year is the year I’ve travelled by plane more than any other… and with labor unrest and laser strikes happening just as I’m travelling, maybe this is a sign I should stop flying. 🙁

Much like Pulp Fiction’s $5 shake, in West Texas you can walk into a fast food joint and get a Six Dollar Burger.

For fast food, it’s pretty damned good, and definitely worth $6.00. It is however, quite big and messy with a bun that is just too small to hold the beef, and the uninitiated could find their hands awash in burger toppings after just a couple bites.

Update: And you can order them with avocado, too! Sweet Jesus!

My ridiculously bad travel experience with American Airlines was magnified a thousand fold for those travelling via United, it seems. Over the holiday weekend, baggage handlers and flight attendants decided to call out sick in an apparent job action, which, despite the action having all the earmarks of a deliberate organized tactic (the picking of the heaviest travel weekend of the year, the apparent unison in which everyone called out, the known bad blood among employees and management over United’s bankrupcty) both sides deny it was a sanctioned labor protest.

Right. Despite the employees of United being annoyed and feeling betrayed over their pension situation, despite the financial troubles United is having, despite the threat of pay cuts, the employees are really, really happy to do their jobs and they just happened to all get the flu on Christmas Eve. Sure, I can buy that.

There’s a particular quote from the Kansas City Star that makes my point quite succintly:

“I understand where they are coming from, but this might kill the airline. This airline cannot afford a lot of bad publicity or passengers booking away.” – Michael Boyd, Aviation Industry Consultant

Exactly right. I can thoroughly sympathize with organized labor wanting to take job actions, and many times I can see justification for it when the complaints are legitimate and management is clearly giving them a raw deal and will not budge when they are perfectly capable of compromising. However, strikes and sickouts only work when the company is financially sound, and can recover from the actions taken once an agreement is reached. United is clearly not sound, and I’m not sure a recovery will occur, considering this is very bad publicity for them. The only people this job action hurt were the passengers, who aren’t at fault for United’s woes and shouldn’t be stranded over something that is not their doing, and the employees, who may not have a job to call sick to in the long run.

United presents a different dynamic, and in conditions like these, employees are faced with a hard choice: either concede to something you’re not happy with, or hasten the date that your paycheck begins to bounce. This was clearly malicious behavior, and I don’t see what the baggage handlers expected to come out of this, except for a much quicker final pay date from United, and a reduced likelhood that dusting the ol’ resume will not let them find work quickly elswhere.

I knew poeple were stupid sometimes, but not this bad. It appears that as countless numbers of people get shiny new cell phones as Christmas presents, they decide to test it out… by calling 911!

Measuring her words as evenly as she can, Diane Chupinski, a 13-year veteran CHP dispatcher who now supervises other dispatchers in the Vallejo center, offers this: “I can say it is not clear to me why people think 911 needs to be tested. If you want to know if your phone works, call your friend and say, ‘Guess what I got for Christmas.’ “

Yeah, I’d be a little pissed off, too. In fact, I really hope that dispatch centers gear up for E-911 Phase II soon (like they already should have been), so that these little test calls transform from anonymous little hangups to actual traceable, locatable calls that they can put the smackdown on.

If your first call on your new cell phone is 911, the house had better be burning down or someone had better be dying. If not, then I’d say you’re also a prime candidate to do other stupid, rude things with your cell phone and aren’t competent to keep it.

American Airlines sucks ass, cannot schedule flights properly, refuses to own up to its own glaring mistakes, and quite frankly, if AA’s financial troubles continue and they go under, then they will have gotten everything they deserve. A company that has gone downhill so badly as what I’ve experienced in the last 24 hours is simply not fit to exist.

That is all.

Oh yeah, Merry Christmas. Only in Texas will you get stories like these.