Day 090 – Waiting

Welcome to Day 90!  Woohoo!

It’s certainly been a strange day.  The stats for COVID infections were not good.  My mother, turning 80 this year, was understandably torn between flying to Queensland amidst such uncertainty.  The state’s Premier, head elected official, had made the call to go into lockdown for three days.  The numbers had increased from the day before and there were another 10 today (source dependent – I picked the highest number which includes hotel quarantine cases).  

It had been a long time since many families had had a chance to catch up for any event, ours was no different.  It also looks like my sister and family will also need to cancel if the trend continues. In the end my mother made the call to cancel her flights, better to avoid the risk of exposure on public transport and at the airport.  Plus, the area we live in has quite a few of the places visited by close contacts of the infected people.  

Once the call was made, my mother wanted me to assist with cancelling her flight.  It was booked through an agent so wasn’t as simple as a direct airline booking.  We rang the number the itinerary suggested.  The voice message stated if it was to do with cancelling or changing flights due to the recent lockdown, phone amendments would incur an automatic $50 penalty, where if changes were made using the messaging app on the website it would incur no additional costs.

Messaging app, it was. I should point, that I assist my mother by remoting into my mother’s computer, she gives me a one-time password to do this.  This helps my mother out because I can type quicker and respond quicker than she can if any questions arise, but she’s still there with me seeing everything going on.  She can also add information and showing me where files are et cetera. We were on the phone together while we were waiting. So, we began the vigil.

Our vigil began at 9:50am, at 11:45am we managed to get an agent and not the automated response.  The automated response popped up every 30-60 minutes, validating we were still there.  The questions were whether my mum was flying within 72 hours (yes) and a multiple choice on the purpose of the enquiry, to which we responded “cancellation”.

The person agent requested some details to verify my mother was authorised to make the change and the flight.  Then the agent asked what action my mother wanted to take, to which my mother responded cancel.  There was no response, and the automated response popped up once again.  My mother had taken a little too long to respond and we assumed that the agent, being busy with all the other flight changes simply moved onto the next call and put us back in the queue.

The vigil continued for many more hours, at 3:53pm we got another person agent.  This time we were ready, while waiting we had typed up the response in textEdit/ Notepad copied it to the clipboard.  When asked about details, it was a simply cut and paste!  The agent asked my mother to wait for a few moments, we did.  The agent returned to us saying that the previous person agent had already cancelled the flights for us!!!!

Not only was it frustrating to learn that we had just spent a good chunk of the day waiting to cancel when a simple.  Flight cancelled, in the message feed would have given us back our day! 

During the first waiting period (9:50am-12:00pm), I had outlined the options my mother had available to her if the cancellation did not go through before her flight was due to depart that afternoon at 6:00pm.  Firstly, she could go catch the flight for which she would have to leave by 2:00pm.  If my mother didn’t get a chance to cancel the flight before the flight time, she would have to forfeit the $400 in flights.

This is where it gets interesting.  My mother, rather than lose the $400, was prepared to forego all her safety concerns and the reason for cancelling not to lose the $400. So, my mother began to repack her suitcase, we had plenty of time while we were waiting.  Of course, while the motivation seemed like it was the money – and in part it was – but it was really contributing to the seesaw of doubts about not coming and the desire to see me again. 

There’s a whole lot I could write on the influence of money and decision-making and the perception of power money pretends to wear, but that’s a discussion for another day.  Today is about waiting and the perception that a large part of my day was wasted, I’m guessing not just by me but probably the majority of people reading this post too.

Oh, I’m calm about it now.  The vigil was a learning opportunity for me.  Although the messaging journey started at 9:50am today.  It began last night, when my mother had run me with her concerns.  Even then, we had started the messaging to cancel her flights.  The wait was long, and my mother wanted to get to sleep.  However, we finished “messaging” at 10:00pm.  This is when I usually begin typing my post.  Sometimes, I get a chance to tweak a few things in the stats spreadsheet to have it work a little smoother or show me another cool stat. 

For those of you who have read yesterday’s post, you’ll know that my night finished at 3:30pm.  Well, with the late finish last night, I decided to do another 3:30am morning, believing that I could wake at 8:30am quickly jump online with my mother and cancel her flight (maybe an hour tops) and I’d go back to sleep for a nap, then write tonight’s post.

Amazing how wrong you (I) can be!  The six hours of waiting tethered to a phone call to my mother and a remote session with my mother did not help.  Yes, I was tired! After lunch I got snippy, snappy and frustrated.  Even during the six hours, the communication with my mother didn’t actually free me up to work on anything that would progress things to allow me to go to bed any earlier or get the place tidied up the way I’d like to have it.

The thing getting me through the day without fully losing my cool was the lure of having three days to myself (presumably my sister may still come, she has a few days up her sleeve to see how matters play out).  Oh, the things I could do with three days and a tidy place!  I’d already started to pull some stuff out of the cupboard which had been used as a dumping ground while the other bedroom’s cupboard was being cleaned out.   There’s something uplifting about getting to stuff on the “one day” list.

Tomorrow is another day.  Tomorrow I’ll catch up on relaxation in the morning, potter around the house for a while doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  Ahh… heaven!  Not that I don’t love my family, now that mum isn’t visiting it allows me to also look at bathroom furniture and maybe organise a tradesman/ company to do the renovation.

Bring it on.  Signing off again at 3:30am, hopefully the last one for a while 🙏.

Let’s see what the cards have to say!