Miscommunication

I went to Air Burkina today to finish buying my ticket to visit Lauren. I had already put down an advance and made the reservation, so I expected this to be a quick errand. I handed over the rest of the cash and the Air Burkina rep started typing away; after about 20 minutes I started feeling guilty about the colleague waiting in the car for me and so started asking how much more time it would take. Then at some point the rep audibly fretted about something and I asked what the problem was. I am still not clear – evidently they erased the flight program and prices from the computer, because it’s changing next month, but they haven’t put any new data in, so he had to enter everything manually? Anyway, eventually he printed out the ticket – but it printed incompletely. I asked if it would be better for me to come back later, but he said No, no, I’ll restart and print it out again. He did, and it printed out incompletely again. I asked (ok, in a totally whiny voice) what the problem was, and he said that it was a technical problem. Then he decided to combine the two incomplete printouts to make one complete ticket. I asked a couple of times if he was sure I wouldn’t have any problems, and the second time he got huffy and said he wouldn’t have sold it to me otherwise, and if I didn’t like it I could give back the ticket.

Now, as these things go, I hadn’t been waiting that long, so I understand if he thought I was overreacting to being kept waiting. (And I wouldn’t have fussed if not for the person I had left sitting in the hot, hot car.) And I guess he felt that I was questioning his goodwill in asking about the ticket more than once. And he was probably stressed out himself by having to enter everything manually and having the ticket machine mysteriously start incompletely printing. I guess I could have handled it better by just being more chill, and probably I won’t have any problems on the trip. It was just one of those situations where a subtle accretion of maladroitness on my part led to bad feelings – I hope that by identifying what happened I can do better next time.

(And if I do have problems, I am totally going to march into his office and demand some kind of compensation. Well, probably not, but I will enjoy the glow of righteousness.)