Tales of a Misguided Mommy: 06/23/08

6.23.2008

Please standby.....

A few months ago my husband told me his best friend from school was celebrating his 30th birthday in Vegas. He REALLY wanted to go. Since my husband would be 30 shortly also, and obviously his old bones would be to tired to travel here soon I figured I should probably let him go while he was still a young spring chicken with a 2 before his age rather then a 3!

(I'm going to get in huge trouble for calling him old)

I told him I would look for a flight and get him set up. He told me that his two good friends worked at the airport and had buddy passes. One friend said he could get him to Vegas, standby for $64.00. The husband said okay, and his friend said to bring the money by any time. A few weeks past and we finally got around to taking the money, only when the husband went down there the ticket now cost $137.00. He paid it with out talking to me. I was shocked because I was pretty sure I could have gotten a non standby ticket for far cheaper.

Wednesday he decided he wanted some nice dress shoes. He doesn't own any because like me he wears flip flops or tennis shoes. Off to the mall we go. After wandering around for hours AND HOURS we decide that instead of black he needs brown and now he probably needs so slacks to match the shoes and OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! We go into Banana Republic and he finds some slacks. I run over to Aldo and discover they are having a shoe sale. I go back and fetch him from Banana Republic with his new slacks that are way to big (but perfect in his opinion). We walk up to Aldo and find some perfect shoes. They were also only $39.98 and that sounded great for a pair of shoes that he would only wear once. We talked to the girls checking out and I browsed shoes for me. I picked up a cute white pair that were on sale down to $29.98. Since they were closing in 3 minutes I said for that much money I would for sure come back tomorrow and get my size. The girls agreed the price was great. My husband gets his shoes and goes to pay. We chat with the girls about sunglasses and the great price of his shoes and leave right as they close. We rush home get him packed and we are feeling pretty good about this trip.

He was due to fly out Friday morning. Thursday Brandon got sick. Visions of a sleepless weekend ran through my head. While I knew he would also be having a sleepless weekend I deemed mine worse since he would at least have the liquor to help him stay awake. After a sleepless Thursday we woke up at 4:00AM to head to the airport. The whole family was wide awake and fully dressed when we go the call that his flight had been delayed until 8:00AM.

Sick kids, late flights, I could already tell what kind of weekend this would be. I finally get him to the airport and he jets to Vegas, only, first they have a layover in Phoenix. I get a text telling me his flight had been delayed and he wouldn't be leaving Phoenix for another 2 hours. 2 hours later I get a text that he was not on the standby list for the next flight, or the one after that. In fact, at 3:30 PM he was still not able to catch a plane, and the next chance wasn't until after 6:30PM. I check out prices for car rentals and find out that for 21 bucks I can rent him a car and he can drive there faster then he would have been able to get there by plane. He leaves the airport, shuttles to Enterprise and gets told that sure the car would be $21.00 IF he wasn't taking it out of state. Now it would be more like $200.00 +. Fuck.

I finally give up, go to Southwest and book him a flight leaving in 5 minutes and he's on his way. He calls his friend at the airport who tells him he can take the credit for the unused standby flight and apply it to a fixed flight for his trip home. The kicker is the next plane leaving from US Air (the standby airline), was the same plane his friend come for OK was on, he told Rob, his name was the first name called on the standby list. Oops. His trip ended up being nothing but more delays. His friends wife managed to be a few hours late the whole day, I felt pretty bad for him.

Friday afternoon I was home sick with Brandon and decide to balance my checkbook. I log on and see a charge to Aldo for $75.00 WHAT THE FUCK. My head nearly explodes. I drive up to the store, grab the sales girl and walk her over to the same shoe under the giant sign saying $39.98. She says, oops it is on the wrong shelf. WHAT!!! So it's on the wrong shelf for 3 days now since we had been there Wednesday. I asked her if maybe they thought they should organize their shit. She said no, because it would just get messed up again so there was no point. She showed me a sticker on the bottom of the shoe that said it was $69.99. I said yeah, we saw that, its a normal price sticker, not a sale sticker and you had a giant sign in the window stating 50% off. Not to mention we told the sales girl (who turned out to be the manager) that he would only be wearing these once so the price of $39.98 was GREAT! She heard us say that price. I was pretty shocked that rather then say to my husband the total of the purchase she just took his credit card and made small talk. I was more shocked when I walked over and picked up the cute white shoes from the $29.98 rack to see they were really $50.00. I couldn't believe the MANAGER of the store let me think they were that cheap, and they would let me drive all the way back up there the next day knowing they were in fact over $20.00 more. The sales girl actually agreed with me but said that since I was rung up by the 21 year old manager there was likely nothing I could do, because the manager would surely not admit she had tried to pull a fast one. She gave me her name and said that I could call the district manager and she would also back me up telling them the shoes were clearly on the other rack, and marked with a normal ticket not a sale ticket, leading us to believe the discount would come off the price as marked. I couldn't even return the shoes because while I was up there yelling about them he was wearing them in Vegas making them non returnable!

He was originally set up to be on an 11:30AM return flight so he knew he could party it up Sunday night. They went out partying until 4:30AM and then remembered that his friend from OK had to be on the 6:30AM flight. The guys had breakfast and then went to the airport. My husband decides he will just go that early too, because surely he would spend less time standing by. I have just fallen asleep so I miss the message that he is going to attempt this. They did not get on the plane. I just laughed. I called US Air to find out about upgrading his ticket and learned, that NO you could not actually upgrade buddy passes, and the credit we had could only be used for another buddy pass. The next flight out is at 9:00 AM and guess what, they don't get on that either. This was okay for Rob as flights from Vegas to Reno happened almost every hour. But, Vegas to OK umm, no more flights until after 6pm. His friend ended up spending $350.00 on a fixed ticket, and wondering if it might have been better to hide in the airport all day and night then tell his wife how much he just spent on a flight.

I ask the husband if he wants to use his money to get another ticket and he says he'll wait. 3 hours later he was telling me he needed me to get him a ticket because he had now spent his money on airport food and a present for Brandon. I call my mom and beg her to please help. She gets him another ticket and he is set to be home in just over an hour at 1:15PM. At 1:15 on the dot I walk into the airport, only to find out that his plane has been delayed 50 minutes. Seriously, could it get any worse. The only redemption was discovering that our airport had a coveted Peets coffee in it (we don't have those like other cities so this was a hidden treasure.) We got a couple Fredos and finally headed home.