I just bought the cheapest flight to LAX which happened to be on United, which I never fly. I tried checking in the day before but it wouldn’t let me because I wasn’t checking a bag and wasn’t allowed an overhead. So I had to go to the desk before the flight to get my boarding pass.

Flight was departing at 7:55 am, I got to the kiosk at about 7:00. It printed out something to take to the desk, so I had to wait a few minutes to talk to someone. I get up there, give the guy my ticket, and after like 10 minutes of typing he says “it’s not looking good.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There aren’t any openings to get you to LA today.”

“Um, what about the flight that I have a ticket for?”

“Oh you missed that.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re late. You’re supposed to be here 45 minutes before boarding.”

“First off, I got here earlier than that. Second, there was nothing yesterday when I tried checking in that I have to be here 45 minutes early or I can’t board.”

“I can’t help you.”

“What the yewt are you talking about?”

“Ok you know what? I’m leaving.”

And he walks away, leaving me at the counter. So I’m trying to get someone to help me figure out what in the world just happened. About 15 minutes later a supervisor shows up and I have to recount everything that happened.

By now it’s 7:30. Technically we could still run and make it. But he says we can’t run that fast (it’s my BIL and me). But he was able to find us a flight to SF to LAX. So we eventually got to LA, just a few hours later.

And that was my once a decade experience with United.