I have had to be the zipper police on more than one occasion at work. Some find this to be awkward, I enjoy it. It is a lot like real police work in that it involves ‘intel’ and I’m usually drinking coffee when I notice the violation.
This morning I was chatting with Plateau, a coworker who was about to meet with a “repeat offender,” who is also a coworker. “Send him this message from me,” I told him. “‘What’s up? Not your zipper.'” Plateau wasn’t sure he wanted to be part of my message service, however, once I shared the unzipped stories with him he decided to play along. “OK, I’ll look down at his pants and say ‘ABC.'” “I don’t think that is what you want to say,” I told him. “Pointing at his crotch and saying ‘ABC’ probably won’t end well. It’s ‘XYZ.’ Examine your zipper, not already been chewed.”
Several hours later I examined my own zipper, packed way too much in my bags and hopped on a plane to LAX for a weekend with S-Unit. The flight arrived early, so we ended up waiting on the tarmac for some time. I was on the exit row and getting ready to try out some of those ’emergency’ techniques I agreed to do when I assumed this seat. I sent my intentions to S-Unit via text. She replied, “Just grab 2 beers, open the door and go down the slide.”
A few (twenty) minutes later we were at the gate. Everybody started getting up and grabbing their belongings. The flight attendant kept looking out the exit door window and her facial expression did not exude confidence. She picked up the phone and whispered to the other end, “Um, there’s no jetway.”
About five minutes after that the pilot made an announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen it looks like we were directed to the wrong gate and there is no jetway to greet us. Please take your seats.” I was assessing the situation and providing regular updates to S-Unit, all the while images of Airplane were running through my mind, “The white zone is for immediate loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no stopping in the red zone…” It was becoming clear that we were in the red zone. S-Unit made mention that the pilot must be a girl, “Girls are always bad at parking.” Which made me ponder, when a girl is flying the plane, do they still call it a cockpit? My deep thought was interrupted by this overhead message, from a man, “Well, it looks like the aircraft is crooked and they’ve got to locate the equipment to push us back – they weren’t planning on doing this until tomorrow morning.” Text from S-Unit, “That’s seriously wrong. I could have watched another episode of Oprah.”
After this experience, I’m thinking I’ll go straight from LAX to CHI and S-Unit and I will tell Oprah our story, in person.