Travel, airports and foreigners
I have mentioned before in SUR in English the frustration suffered at East Midlands airport on being made to pay a ridiculous amount of money for a small plastic bag to put a (no doubt potentially very dangerous) lipstick in (SUR in English, March 2nd 2007), and the invisibility syndrome I suffer from when on a flight and desperately in need of a medicinal coñac (SUR in English, December 19th 2008 and this blog). Now, after the season of goodwill and much travelling, there is another thing I need to write about.
Why do the no-frills airlines employ people who don’t speak a word of Spanish to serve customers on the Malaga route? Or on the Düsseldorf route whose German is limited to ‘ein bisschen’? Courtesy to customers isn’t a frill, it’s good business sense. Don’t they want foreigners to be able to buy their disgustingly overpriced tasteless sandwiches? Surely that’s how they make their money? For Spanish readers of this blog, and I know there are some, (thank you and gracias), “all day breakfast bap” translates as “a slab of egg-coloured substance with something loosely called ‘bacon’ inside something which could pass as bread”. No wiser? Never mind, you didn’t want one anyway. Choose Pringles and wine, and never, ever, the instant capuccino with globs of granulous milk powder floating on the weak brown liquid aka coffee….
Apart from the plastic bags, EMA still has to be the most annoying airport – though I am open to correction on this, not having tried them all! I can understand airlines placing limits on the weight of luggage, but how have the airlines using EMA persuaded Security to connive with them on the number of pieces of hand luggage?
By spending a few hours doing research, and with the aid of a pound to kilos conversion website, you can manage to pack your luggage according to the airline’s rules, but then you get to Security at EMA and have to put your handbag in your hand luggage, your coat and scarf over your arm, expensive little plastic bag containing lipstick in hand and boarding pass between your teeth, worrying all the while about the whereabouts of your purse and photographic ID which you always keep close to hand, but now they are in the handbag in the little case stuck in that tunnel along with your shoes and the antihistamine pill you need to take for the prickly heat brought on by the stress of being able to hear your mobile ringing but not knowing exactly where it is ….
Trains are great, of course. I love trains, in Spain, but they don’t go anywhere near Nottingham.
And getting back to foreigners – it was at East Midlands airport too that a certain car hire company annoyed me with its attitude to its customers. Not the one whose employees shrugged and went back to drinking coffee when I mentioned that the car I had hired from them stank of tobacco and the windscreen wipers didn’t work properly. I can cope with that, I speak the language. But it riled me when another one conned an Italian customer into signing for services he didn’t want, and then gave him the keys to a car which had a bump on it not mentioned in the documentation. They couldn’t have known he would check the car thoroughly in the dark and cold before driving off in it, or that he had English-speaking family who would spot the con and fix it. And clearly they didn’t care that they would be alienating a foreigner.
Filed under: Spanish language by Liz Parry
Dear Liz,
I was reading the article you wrote above and in some ways I do agree with you. Our airports and the airlines are crooks, they have a captive audience and don’t they exploit it? However, where you rightly observed things that go on in the UK, they also and more importantly happen here with more blatant disregard to us “guiris” I have never been so ripped off, abused, ignored and subjected to wholesome hostility and I was eating in a so called fine dining restaurant in Marbella. I was paying for this service too can you imagine. The British bend over backwards to as “do-gooders” for other nationalities and then when we bring our money abroad and invest in their country, we are only rewarded by ignorance, abuse and nonchalance (or that don’t give a crap) attitude. Guess what…? They will now pay the price for their arrogance as now foreigners are leaving in their thousands along with their cash and businesses. It’s sad but very necessary, maybe the Spanish will then reconsider their position in Europe. 3 million out of work, less Northern Europeans coming to spend their money… Recovery for this country will be long and hard. Maybe, they should have kept hold of the peseta, everyone was much better off.
Re comments on Airports. My own experience of Malaga was very good. My elderly mother in law had been staying with us and I took her to the Airport for her return To England. I expected to be prevented from going any further than the check in desk. Far from it, the staff were courtious and helpful, I was able to pass through check in, security etc to the departure desk and stay with her until her flight was ready. In England however my main complaint is the empty corridors of tape we are forced to go up and down until we reach a desk, where on occasions six staff await one customer. Perhaps because of obesity the airports consider it to be necessary to give travellers a good walk be fore they sit in a departure lounge for a couple of hours.
I think these events occur depend on the person that is serving you.
But in general, there are three things you can blame, the employers, the employees and at large the culture. The employees don’t get training so their lack of customer service and courtesy is obvious. The employers on the other hand on hire them on the part time basis as the Costa business is seasonal and so don’t see the need to invest in them due to the high turnover rate. They are mutually shooting themselves in the foot as the customers are the ones who have the last say with their money. Finally the culture of customer service we are accustomed to in the Anglo countries are different from what it is here, perspective is required.
Dear Liz
I was quite amazed to read about the problems you have had at East Midlands Airport in the current edition of Sur in English – this is because I have the misfortune to travel there on a fairly regular basis and I have suffered the same fate – I thought it was only me they were picking on!
Like you I am unable to comprehend why they deem it to be necessary to squash your handbag into your hand luggage in order to pass through the security scanner. My main argument with this is that once you have passed through the security checkpoint, they will happily sell you as many bags of duty free merchandise as you are able to carry on board the aircraft; thereby defeating the argument that only one item of hand luggage is allowed on.
This brings me to my other gripe about East Midlands Airport, I object to having to trek right through the middle of the duty free shopping area in order to reach the departure gate. As a matter of principle I wouldn’t buy anything from there if my life depended upon it!
On my last pre Christmas visit, I was unable to get my handbag inside my hand luggage and was told that I could be denied boarding the aircraft at the gate. I almost lost the plot at this point, as I had paid the surcharge (and the excess baggage charge) in order to send two bags through to the hold so that my hand luggage item was not over sized.
I have travelled fairly extensively and East Midlands Airport is the only place I have encountered this problem – and all this hassle just makes me feel that I really don’t want to travel via there, however it is the most convenient airport for visiting my family.
[...] the past weeks I have had to revise my opinion about East Midlands airport. Just a bit. The main reason is that whoever installed that rip-off plastic bag machine has now [...]