Dumb American and Dumb Hampton

My trip to Puerto Rico started out uneventful. Flight left at 6:15 a.m. We landed in Miami at 10:30 and our connecting flight left at 12:30. We had two hours to kill at the airport. I love to people watch and the airport is one of the best venues. The Miami airport didn’t let me down. It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud when I saw this girl. She walked up wearing one of terry cloth swimsuit cover-ups that some people wear as a sun dress. Well, this chick was wearing a green terry cloth swimsuit cover-up (strapless) with her swimsuit on underneath. That alone was not bad but when I looked at her shoes I had to turn away. She was wearing Uggs. She looked as though she had passed out by the pool the night before and someone woke her up in time to get her to the airport just in time. My co-worker looks at me and says, “Clearly she isn’t from England because the English have more of a fashion sense than that.” I get in line and I over hear this chick talking. Sure enough – she’s from England.

We boarded our plane and made it safely to Puerto Rico. We go to baggage claim and our bags did not make it. Not only did our bags not make it, none of the bags from Nashville made it to Puerto Rico (about 40 bags). We were told that they might make it to the island that night. Christine and I go eat dinner in Old San Juan and then head back to the hotel, which happens to be located right next door to a (no lie) Cockfighting Arena. I call American Airlines and they have located our bags. I was told that the delivery service would pick up our bags at 11:00p.m. and I would have my bag within 6 hours. I go to bed.

I wake up in the morning, call the front desk to see if my bags had been delivered and they had not. The hotel told us we should probably go to the airport to pick them up ourselves. Christine and I get in the car and head to the airport. There is no way for me to enter the baggage claim area from the outside so I have to go to the ticket counter, have them print me off a fake ticket where they write in huge red letters BAGGAGE. I take my fake ticket and go through security and then I find my way to baggage claim. Once at baggage claim I am told that my bags had been delivered to the hotel the night before. At this point I’m just ticked. I try to always remain calm but I’m just tired of the run around. I made American Airlines call Hampton Inn and talk to the front desk. The front desk tells them they have not received any bags. Before American hangs up the phone I tell her to tell the front desk to actually look for the bags. Sure enough, my bags are at the hotel. At this point Christine is laughing at me because she’s never seen this mad. This is ridiculous and uncalled for. As soon as I make it to the front desk the lady tells me 5 minutes after we had left the hotel for the airport, American delivers our bags. I know that’s a load of crap and I called her out on it. I’ve received pretty good service from Hampton since then.

You are probably wondering where all 40 bags had been for 16 hours. We were told that they were in Miami. American had FORGOTTEN to load the bags onto our connecting flight. How does someone forget to load an entire cart of 40 bags sitting on the tarmac? I surprised the Airbus didn’t roll over them.