DADWAGON

Since I took the step of publicly feuding with United, I might as well give a surprising update. They had told me often—as a blowoff, I figured—to complain through their website. The call center representative slowly spelling out the URL: w-w-w-dot-u-n-i-t-e-d-dot-c-o-m was easily the most infuriating part of my whole experience.

And yet.

It turns out that United Airlines might have one thing in common with me: they find it easier to express uncomfortable emotions in writing rather than over the phone. In this case, they managed to express their regret for having secretly rebooked me and then canceling my whole ticket once I missed my new (secret) flight. Here’s the meat of the email they sent me:

We apologize that you have never received a flight notification via email or phone contact.  We have been in contact with our Easy Update Department about your concern of not being notified properly.  They have informed me it is a known issue system wide and are working on correcting the problem as soon as possible.

They then followed their words with $200 vouchers, three of them (a strange number, since there were four people in our party). That is, of course, appreciated. But, in a perhaps predictable fashion, it wasn’t really the vouchers that I liked most about this. It was the simple acknowledgment that they could have done better and that it is a “known issue.” I now know why hospitals that simply acknowledge and apologize for mistakes face fewer malpractice suits. I’d like to think that most people are not wired to be litigious or even whiny. They just want to be heard and acknowledged, which can be a challenge in a huge customer-service bureaucracy like the airlines have. So thank you, United, for finding a way to express yourselves. We are friends again.

I try not to link too often to items found on BoingBoing—they get plenty of traffic already, and everyone reads them, so why bother? But I found this recent rant—about due dates and statistics—fascinating. It’s the kind of thing I should’ve been obsessed about when Sasha was gestating but somehow forgot to be:

Petunia was getting bigger. Her bones were hardening. Her eyebrows were growing. She had a July 11th due date, and, though there was not much I could do to influence anything, I could, nonetheless obsess about what, precisely, a due date means. I asked anyone who I thought might have some insight. I know, for example, that due dates are simply calculated by adding 40 weeks to the start of the mother’s last menstrual cycle. But how effective is that? How many babies are born on their due dates?

Our child birthing class teacher: “Oh only 5% of babies are actually born on their due dates.”

Me: So are half born before, half after?

Teacher: “Oh you can’t know when the baby is going to come.”

Me: I get it. I just want to know the statistics.

Teacher: “The baby will come when it is ready.”

It goes on from there. If you like science or statistics or are just a whacked-out obsessive nut job like this BoingBoinger and me, you might like.

The Parents Television Council has produced a video of hot and sexy teens to show that there are too many hot and sexy teens on television. Thanks to Nerve for clueing us in to this bit of zany misdirection.