Category: Scholarship

What do I mean by “three and three,” you ask? Why, that’s the number of presenters on my panel and the number of brave souls who came to listen to us talk. Actually, it was about what I had expected for a 9:30 AM Saturday morning session, especially since I think our panel title could have just as easily been “miscellaneous.” Don’t get me wrong– the other two people on my panel (Elizabeth Weiser and Rita Hadin) had good talks; it’s just that was essentially no connection between these things. The basic reaction to my comic was “Huh. He made a comic.” Still, it was a friendly chat, which is about all I’m looking for out of most conference presentations.

I decided I needed to go to at least one “real” panel, sort of a combination of both a certain amount of “guilt” at my bad participation and a desire to get my money’s worth. Generally, I go to three kinds of panels at the CCCCs: ones with “stars” of the field, the ones with a bit of a “rock concert” feel; very specific computer topics I am interested in by people I know who are likely to have good things to say; or panels about some sort of topic I really don’t know anything about but which sounds kind of interesting. I picked the last type for this panel and saw Debra Hawhee give a talk in the eyes and the “vision thing” in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Jeffrey Walker talk about declamation. Both were great talks, and I very much appreciated Walker’s ability to connect the particular declamation he was discussing to current events.

And that, as they say, is how she wrote– well, at least for official things. The unofficial/”fun” in New York side of the trip will come on the unofficial blog after I get back to Ypsilanti. Kind of a short conference for me made all the more short by Northwest Airlines, which still sucks. See everyone in New Orleans; I might even drive….

What is it that they say about the best laid plans? Deep sigh….

My original plan, before Northwest Airlines decided to just leave my luggage sitting at the airport for about 20 hours before doing anything about it, was to get up first thing in the morning and go to sessions and such at the CCCCs all day Friday. My lost luggage and highly smelly clothes changed that. So instead, I went shopping at Macy’s, actually changed into my new clothes at the store, and got to the conference at about 11:30. I shmoozed with various folks for a while, went to the book exhibit, shmoozed some more, went out for a long lunch with my near future colleague John Dunn so I could answer those kinds of questions he wanted to ask when he was on the interview but which he couldn’t ask (you know what I mean). And by then, it was three-ish, I was beat, I had dinner plans (I’ll post more about that on my unofficial blog eventually), and so my conference day was over.

Damn you, Northwest Airlines!

Of course, it wasn’t a complete loss. Thursday night began with the St. Martin’s party at Tavern on the Green. I felt like a proud papa talking with some colleagues at some PhD programs where we have sent/are sending some of our recent MA graduates and enjoyed some of the best food I’ve had at a St. Martin’s shin-dig. I was a bit surprised by Tavern on the Green though; not as nice as I thought it might be, but my expectations might have been too high.

Thursday night, I did end up meeting up with my usual partners in crime at the CCCCs, Bill H-D and Steve B (and the usual Purdue folk). Since I’m not splitting a room with Bill and Steve this year (my wife came with me to this CCCCs), we were only out comparing various notes while enjoying refreshments until about 1 or so.

When I did get to the conference on Friday, I thought the book exhibit was a little disappointing, maybe because it seemed to me like there weren’t a lot of presses there. The textbook business has been buying each other for a long time, but the same seems to be happening with academic presses as well. I noticed that Routledge has bought LEA, for example.

Oh, and our luggage did show up, finally– about ten minutes before we had to leave for our dinner plans.

And now I’m getting ready for my Saturday morning presentation. I’m actually sitting in the lobby of my hotel (my wife is still asleep), The Paramount. Basically, a thumbs up. It has this uber-pretentious/mod thing to it. The lobby has fashionably mismatched furniture, polished concrete, lighting designed for effect instead of visibility, and they’re playing 80’s pop music at a volume beyond atmosphere. My parents would hate this, but we think it’s kinda cool.

Originally, I was going to present and leave, but given my inability to go to panels yesterday, I’ll be hitting at least one panel presentation. Unless I run into someone, of course.

I’m writing this several hours before I can post it since I’m in the Detroit airport, soaking in textbook (perhaps that’s why it belongs on my official blog instead of the unofficial one?) examples of bad (with bursts of good) customer service.

First the bad: per my fetish for getting to the airport very early (almost 20 years ago now, I missed a flight because of the friend who took me to the airport, a chronically late sort of guy), my wife and I were sitting at our gate about an hour and a half before we were scheduled to depart. There was some flight leaving for Buffalo at our gate, and we didn’t think much about it. Around 45-30 minutes before we were scheduled to leave, my wife goes to the desk at the gate and finds out that our flight has been canceled entirely.

Now, I’ve been in situations where flights change gates, and I’ve been in situations where flights get canceled. But I’ve never been sitting the area near the gate and NOT heard this sort of thing being announced. Anyway, finding this out like this makes me mad. Really REAAAALLLLYYYY mad, and for those of you who have seen me shift into “Hulk Angry at Customer Service Person� mode, I have to tell you that it’s not pretty.

I get up, gather my stuff while my wife is doing the same thing, and go over to the podium. “Why wouldn’t you announce that the flight was canceled?â€� I yell pretty much as loud as I can (oh, and this is something that many loyal readers can confirm– I pretty much have the loudest voice of anyone you are likely to meet).

“Hey, didn’t you see there was no one around here?� the Northwest gate guy says.
Not having time to deal with this jerk, my wife and I scurry to some area to reboarding our flight. “I’ll do the talking, I’ll do the talking,� my wife keeps saying. Fine. So while she goes and actually arranges for the re-booking, I’m asking to speak to a supervisor, who turns out to be the person managing the line of people rebooking flights because of other cancellations. Angry at Northwest, this person, the world, etc. with a passion of a 1000 burning suns, I proceed to tear this person a new one, so to speak. This proved to be somewhat cathartic for me and great theater for the growing line of people, some of whom I am sure were waiting for their opportunity to have at this person.

Given that this “supervisor-type� seemed to have the job that might be best described as “get yelled at by angry customers,� this person was not going to give us a whole lot of satisfaction. We did end up getting booked onto a flight to JFK instead of LAG, and we headed to the gate.

I was still pretty pissed off, so I went to find a white courtesy phone to try and complain to some other Northwest supervisor. There was nothing on the other end of the phone– no dial tone, nothin’. So I hiked over to some desk with some other customer service folks hanging around, was told “oh sure, eventually someone will pick up the phone,â€� and hike back over to the not so curtious phone. Anger is seething in me, and I imagine the tease for my story on the local TV news services all over the country: “A seemingly mild-mannered college professor killed three Northwest customer service reps today at Detroit Metro. More at 11.â€�

Finally, a different Northwest rep comes over and says “hey, is there anything I can do?â€� I give the version of my story (at slightly lower volume), and tell him at this point, what I want is to figure out the deal with our luggage and to make up the difference in a cab ride from JFK (further away, a bit more expensive, etc.) Finally, this guy tries to make it right, explains the weather situation that canceled these flights, and he gives us a voucher for a limo ride to Manhattan. Okay, fine, there’s a brush of good customer service in there.

But then, when we get to JFK airport, and find out that a) we have much confusion regarding our the location of our luggage, though we’re told that we should receive the luggage yet tonight, and b) the car/limo service for which we receive a voucher does not appear to exist. In other words, what I was given in Detroit turns out to be worthless.

There’s more, but I’ll shake it off and get on with some conference things. But the point is this: There were any number of opportunities for someone at Northwest to try to make things right, and instead, they decided to keep making things wrong.

I’ll still end up flying Northwest because if you stay in the metro Detroit area and you want to get on an airplane, you pretty much have no choice but to fly on Northwest. But just to repeat: Northwest really sucks.