Confessional

What the airline check-in agent thinks about you

SOMETIMES I’d like to go round the entire world handing out sets of scales and a tape measure. That way, people would already know their bag was too heavy, too tall or too wide to make it on to the plane.

Some passengers claim they ‘weren’t told’. Well, unless they’ve never flown before and can’t read, they were told — but it doesn’t stop them. If people refuse to pay the excess, they have to leave it behind. Some men really lose their temper — I ask them to stand aside while I serve the next passenger, and if they won’t, we call security. Luckily, we are trained to be polite or I’d have lost my job a long time ago. It’s the same with late check-ins. If the gate’s closed, I can’t re-open it just because somebody overslept. They’ve seen the movies and think they can do a dramatic sprint and leap over the check-in desk. They can’t.

The worst is when people’s passports have expired. I still remember the family going to Disneyland Paris — the dad’s passport was a month out of date, and he hadn’t checked. They didn’t make a huge fuss, but they looked devastated.

As for upgrades , whatever you might have heard, dressing in a business suit will not get you bumped up. Plenty of people try it and I always have to disappoint them.