This morning I’m going to share another story about work, and the cycles of workplace relationships.
As regular readers know, I work at an airport. As everyone knows, the last 14-15 months have been…something. Last spring, as the floor dropped out from under the industry, my employer asked people to take voluntary leaves of absence.
Many in my station did just that, and for a few weeks going to work felt like the last day of school, right down to the “have a nice summer” comments and waves goodbye. I wasn’t signing yearbooks, but it had that same energy.
What should’ve been peak travel season was instead a hollowed-out few months. It was longer students returning home, or families heading on long-awaited vacations. It was health care workers going to early hot spots, and people racing to get home to see stricken relatives before the clock ran out.
A skeleton crew stayed on to work the small number of flights left—and serve the even smaller number of customers. Isaac was one of them. On the surface, we don’t have much in common. He’s older than I am, is from another part of the world, and is a man of deep abiding faith. He also has a thick accent, that combined with my being hard of hearing can make communication difficult.
It wasn’t unusual for our passenger counts to be in the teens instead of hundreds. Part of my job is to get flight release paperwork to the gate. Those dot matrix printers you hear shooting out reams of paper? That’s me. It’s as exciting as it sounds.
Usually, I’m busy. In the late spring of 2020, I was not. In fact, I spent most of my day monitoring air traffic control and our air-to-ground radios, listening to planes passing over us & waiting for diversions.
At any rate, I took to printing flight releases downstairs and then making my way up to the terminal to hand-delivering them. Partly to gets some exercise, but also to see if there were actually any other people up there. He would meet me partway with a big smile and a hearty thank you. It became a strange pattern- a sliver of routine in a year that was anything but.
He’s as optimistic as I am cynical--maybe that’s part of his faith. I’m not sure, I never asked. What I do know is that his mood proved infectious, and as last summer droned on, our simple interactions grew in importance to me, and I found myself looking forward to them. After all, if he “ just knew” things would be okay, why shouldn’t I?
Later in the summer, our company offered a generous retirement /early-out program, and roughly 18000 people took them up on it. This meant there were positions across the system that needed to be backfilled, including promotions.
Isaac hit a double; not only is he going back to where his family is, but he also landed a promotion in a new department. Wednesday was his last day here.
His gain is our loss, but I’m excited for him.
It’s easy to root for someone that invests so much time rooting for everyone around him.
On to the good stuff:
Speaking of human interaction, here’s a great piece from Charlie Warzel on crowds, and why watching sports just felt off last year.
This is one of the wildest true crime stories I’ve read in a long time. I don’t remember it happening, but it’s easy to see why it enthralled an entire nation. Sometimes it feels good to cheer for the bad guy.
"It is easier to keep adding exceptions and justifications to a belief than to admit that a challenger has a better explanation."
— Zeynep Tufekci
In The Air:
The dominant aviation story this past week is RyanAir flight 4798 and the Belarusian government—or rather their authoritarian leader- faking a bomb scare, forcing the aircraft (pictured above) to divert under military escort, in order to arrest a dissident known to be onboard.
I wrote about it here.
Anne Applebaum writing for The Atlantic warns of the ugly precedent this could set if sanctions against the regime aren’t swift.
In autocratic capitals all over the world, dictators and their flunkies are also watching to see how the West reacts—whether Lukashenko gets away with it and whether, perhaps, this new tool of oppression will become available to them too. Invariably, others will seek to use it, if only because it sends a message to their dissident and exile communities: You are not safe. You are never safe. Not even if you live in a democracy; not even if you have political asylum; not even if you are sitting on a commercial plane, thousands of feet above the ground.
On this side of the pond, the press misinterpreted a routine action by the FAA and ran with it. What is really a fairly dry update of data sets became headline fodder across the nation, accuracy be damned. No, airlines won’t be asking to weigh you before a flight.
Here’s a quick read on Northwest Airlines travel brochures from the late 1940’s
In Your Ears:
The Tragically Hip was a band that was always kind of the periphery to me. I knew they were there, knew they were well regarded/liked, but never quite made the leap to actually listening to them. After reading this article on the band by Jessica Lee McMillan, it’s clear I’ve been missing out.
They have a new release out, the band’s first since the death of lead singer Gord Downie. Saskadelphia is a collection of material that for whatever reason didn’t make the cut on previous albums. Band member Paul Langlois describes it as the “sound of a band on fire.”
Meanwhile, it’s hard to believe this record turned 34 this week. Not for nothing, this is one of the first CDs I ever bought after saving up for a player, along with The Talking Heads’ “Stop Making Sense.”
Do you have a favorite song off the record? Let me know in the comments!
Also This:
Two For The Road:
Thanks for being here,
Kevin—
P.S. This week’s subtitle is a phrase Isaac uses often, second only to “thank you” and “it’s always nice to see you.”
What caught your attention this week? Got a rant or rave? Let me know in the comments or send me an email. I read all the responses. You can also read more of my work on Medium, and connect with me on Twitter.
What a heartwarming story! Thanks for sharing your experience