by Khalid Salaam
Early!
Our flight was scheduled to depart from Newark at 7: 30 so I ordered a car service to pick me up at 5 30, thinking that would be enough time. I felt pretty optimistic until I walked into the terminal and saw an epic check in line. No jokes there might have been 300 people ahead of me. I texted Ben to let him know and he called me informing me that the curbside joint was less heavy. It was about 15 degrees but whatever I wasn’t gonna let the cold get to me. So all four of us are just about to the check-in desk when some random dude walks up and ask if we mind he cuts in front. He wasn’t offering money or nothing just trying to get over I guess. We sent him to back of the line with the quickness, Then when we got to the front of the line some lady asked the check in guy if she could check in before telling the guy she had a 7:30 flight. Either Sam or Ben replied with “so do we” and the woman got real agitated, saying something about calming down or some bs like that. I just looked at her with the “don’t try us” face and she let it go. But here’s the good part. We get to the desk and the guy tells us one of us has been flagged and would have to go inside and check in. Now understand that it was already 6:30 so there was no way we were gonna make our
Flight. We inform the dude and he tells us to wait he’s gonna see what he can do but we have to “take care” of him. He comes back in 5 minutes and says its all good. So yeah we hadn’t even made it to Vegas yet before we got hustled. I’m pretty sure he made the whole the thing up to get more money from us. We weren’t in a position to argue with our time constraints so yeah he got us. He’s an asshole but I can’t knock him though. Dude had hand and he used it with precision. Once we get in we see that the security line is snaking down at least two floor levels so we immediately look for an alternative route. Lang suggests we just go to the 3rd floor and see what happens. We do and see a long line but not nearly as serious. We pretty much just got in where we could fit it, hoping we would make our flight. I comment that it was the perfect storm of airport bs Think about it, all-star, spring break, vacations, a holiday wknd and people still stuck from weather related flight cancellations. It was a blessing that we made it to the plane.
