1. The Red Witch
“Did you try to check in at the kiosk?” she asked when Trudy and her husband stepped up to the counter.
She was wearing a read coat with a silky, poofy scarf tied around her neck. She looked straight at the fair and industrious Trudy. No smile. A grim, blank stare on her face.
“I tried to, but it only gave us one boarding pass,” Trudy said and then tried to explain that …
“The kiosk doesn’t print boarding passes,” the woman said, leering at Trudy.
“Well what I tried to …”
“I see you in the system,” she snapped, giving Trudy a nasty look. “Did you check in online?”
“Yes,” Trudy said.
That was all she needed to hear. She stared at Trudy, clearly implying that she had not answered the questions correctly.
Within moments the paperwork was complete, their boarding passes were in their hands and the Red Witch was behind them as they made their way to customs, happy to leave the woman in red behind.
2. Trudy and Her Husband
As they stood in line, Trudy mentioned the encounter at the counter. She talked about how the woman in red was so rude. Sadly, she got no sympathy from her husband.
“I tried to explain, but she just wouldn’t …”
“You didn’t answer her question,” her husband interrupted.
She tried to explain …
“She asked if you tried to use the kiosk, but you wanted to talk about boarding passes.”
Trudy tried to explain again. Her husband would have nothing to do with it. It was a simple question that didn’t get answered. That was there all there was to it.
3. Mallory
There was some confusion with the airplane.
Clearly no pilots had arrived, although it was parked at the gate. Looking out the windows onto the tarmac, they could see that the cockpit was dark. The plane was sitting silently in the cold and dark of a Canadian winter morning.
Mallory was behind the counter working furiously to rebook all the passengers on different flights. Yet despite her fury at the keyboard and her tenacity on the telephone, the line was hardly moving. The passengers were all certain to miss their connections, and they were getting very impatient. Mallory didn’t let it phase her. She kept working at the computer working on one passenger at a time.
There was a group of six at the front of the line. Mallory had booked them all on a different airline. It must have been a complex process, because it took a very, very long time.
The telephone rang, and Mallory picked it up. “I’ll be there in 15 seconds,” she said.
She hung up the phone, gave each of the six passengers a new boarding pass, threw a scarf around her neck.
“Go to that gate over there,” she said. “I need to go get your luggage.”
She put on a coat and disappeared.
4. The Red Witch Returns
“It’s cold outside!” Mallory said to when she finally returned.
“You transferred their bags yourself!?” Trudy’s husband asked.
“But it kind of felt good to be outside,” she smiled.
He leaned over the counter and whispered, “You’re doing a really, really good job. Thank you.”
Just then, the doors behind the counter opened, and the woman with the red coat and the poofy scarf around her neck walked out. She strode into the room, her face carrying that same blank plastic stare.
“Oh no,” Trudy groaned quietly to her husband.
“Yep,” Mallory said.
“What!?” Trudy asked. “You agree? You know!?”
“Yep,” she said with a slightly stern expression replacing her previous smile. “Yep, we all feel the same way. Can’t explain it.”
Trudy looked at her husband and jabbed her elbow into his ribs.
“I was so right.”