Since I moved into my new job over the past month … I’ve grown to appreciate the fact that I don’t really have to deal with people and customers as much as I used to. It’s a desk job – I move a lot of paper both real and virtual. Today, though, I just happen to answer the phone and get a message to relay from the airport information desk. Apparently the sister one of our customers on the next departing flight committed suicide by shooting herself in the head. The customer’s wife was urgently looking for him and I needed to relay the message. Of course, it wasn’t to tell him of his sister’s fate, but simply to call. When I walked upstairs to the gate to page the customer on the PA system, I notice a somewhat irate/anxious person in a wheelchair complaining apparently because of the long wait for a wheelchair attendant to bring him to baggage claim. All the while I’m trying to look for the guy whose sister died, the old man is becoming more and more escalated. So irritated that he starts cursing and shouting and the ENTIRE waiting area is just looking at us deal with the situation. Mind you, the waiting area was filled with people waiting to board the next flight, we had 2 planes at the gate, flight crews were buzzing about, etc. I try to calm him down and ask him to sit and we’ll take care of him. I even persuade the exiting flight crew to walk him down themselves. He doesn’t let up – I finally track down the other man – I walk the older man down to the baggage claim myself. After a little while – the old man figures out that I’m from the Philippines and starts speaking to me in Filipino. He asks me outright if I spoke ‘Tagalog’. I said no, but I understand it well and told him to speak as much Filipino to me he wants! Lord – just about the only time I can pull the race card to my advantage to try to settle a bad moment. On the way to baggage claim, I find out that he’s in town for the WWII memorial dedication. I speak to his grand daughter picking him up and find out that her family was worried that he’d be kicked off the plane because of his outbursts. Hmmm. Let’s just say that his reservation was ‘duly documented’. Right before I got myself into all of this, I was sitting at my desk chatting online with an old team member in Florida on how I must 'miss' working out there on the front line. I DON'T THINK SO.