It's the most wonderful time of the year
Dec. 21st, 2005 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyranoWorking at an airport the past three years has... done a lot to destroy the romanticism I might still have of a holiday that hasn't been that romantic for me in quite some time.
All around me, society tells me how happy everybody is at Christmas, and how warm and loving and sharing and giving we are inspired to be.
And I spend the day at the airport where people are distraught, distressed, unhappy, surly, snappish, exhausted and a lot of other things. People are shitty to each other; sometimes people are downright nasty. There are exceptions, as always, but the majority of passengers (and non-passengers, either employees or people calling here because somebody they were waiting for was delayed) feel like they have been cheated out of their entitled holiday cheer, and they usually have somebody in specific to blame.
It reminds me why I'm a misanthrope, and it makes every single one of those societally sponsored messages about the Joyous Holiday Season and makes it sound even more hollow, hypocritical and grating than it would otherwise be.
In the happymaking corner, I got CDs from Carabosse and Hamgallon today (I got to turn 'Dobrodosli' up really loud and get the full effect of the violins today on the way to work!), and moses sent me like six DVDs full of music but I'm putting off those until after the holiday as they're in .ogg format and will require me to load each track individually into Audacity and then save a new version in mp3 format. So it'll be a little labor intensive.
PS: Who do we know that likes wine? I have a Portuguese Rose that my supervisor gave me for Christmas.
All around me, society tells me how happy everybody is at Christmas, and how warm and loving and sharing and giving we are inspired to be.
And I spend the day at the airport where people are distraught, distressed, unhappy, surly, snappish, exhausted and a lot of other things. People are shitty to each other; sometimes people are downright nasty. There are exceptions, as always, but the majority of passengers (and non-passengers, either employees or people calling here because somebody they were waiting for was delayed) feel like they have been cheated out of their entitled holiday cheer, and they usually have somebody in specific to blame.
It reminds me why I'm a misanthrope, and it makes every single one of those societally sponsored messages about the Joyous Holiday Season and makes it sound even more hollow, hypocritical and grating than it would otherwise be.
In the happymaking corner, I got CDs from Carabosse and Hamgallon today (I got to turn 'Dobrodosli' up really loud and get the full effect of the violins today on the way to work!), and moses sent me like six DVDs full of music but I'm putting off those until after the holiday as they're in .ogg format and will require me to load each track individually into Audacity and then save a new version in mp3 format. So it'll be a little labor intensive.
PS: Who do we know that likes wine? I have a Portuguese Rose that my supervisor gave me for Christmas.
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Date: 2005-12-22 08:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-22 08:15 pm (UTC)Looking forward to it myself. (:
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Date: 2005-12-23 03:10 am (UTC)On a slightly more serious note, yes, people are shitty to each other over the holidays, but people are in fact shitty to each other all the time. I just try to remember that it's not usually the same people being shitty to each other all the time - the woman yelling at you for a flight delay today may be the same woman who helps her broke friend out with hospital expenses tomorrow.
Like it or not, we're all just people, trying to get by as best we can. Unfortunately, working in the travel industry means you get to see most people's grumpy and surly side more than anything - flight delays and last-minute packing and the stress of getting from one place to another are enough to make even the most Pollyanna of people grouchy. If it depresses you that much, had you thought about looking for another job? (Just a thought, I don't know much about your individual situation.)
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Date: 2005-12-23 08:53 am (UTC)