My airline wants to know how a recent flight I took went. One question on the survey asked: "What emotion best describes how you felt
when your trip ended?" My
options were: "Delighted; Appreciated;
Pleased; Content; Relieved; Indifferent; Disappointed; Hurried; Frustrated; Neglected;
Angered; or Other (please specify)."
Note the conspicuous absence of "All of the Above," as a choice.
A single, one-word answer wasn't easy for someone who brings
a multi-dimensional emotional state to the table. When this particular flight
ended I felt:
Delighted - I was
on my way to hang out with two of my favorite people!
Appreciated - Talk about the "friendly skies."
We passengers gratuitously smiled at one another, loudly but warmly forgiving
any accidental trespasses. Flying to a city located in the Southeast or Midwest
usually involves a whole different caliber of personalities.
Pleased - At one
point, I looked down at my rings, which led to glancing down at the rest of
what I wore. I really hit it out of the ballpark with the ensemble I'd thrown
on that morning. Five stars.
Content - Understatement,
understatement, understatement.
Relieved - Still
couldn't believe I didn't end up missing this flight, given how late I'd woken
up and the amount of unexpected cross-town traffic.
Indifferent - "What
was with the pilot first announcing the local temperature in Celsius degrees,
before slowly translating it into Fahrenheit? " I thought, before
eventually shrugging it off and thinking, "Whatever," as I continued checking
myself out.
Disappointed - We
landed 15 minutes too soon for my liking. I didn't get to finish another
chapter of my book.
Hurried - When I first looked
up after gathering all of my stuff on the way out, I was the last passenger in
the cabin. Everyone else seemed long gone.
Frustrated - This plane was
too small to haul my second carry-on item into the cabin with me, so I had to pass
it over to a baggage handler on the jetbridge. On one of the last flights I took, a flight
attendant-in-training told me about the opening minutes of one of the last
flights she took - the door to the baggage
compartment under the plane hadn't been properly locked, and the pilot turned
around to head back to the airport, once he realized that passengers' luggage had
been falling out of the plane and into the ocean.
Neglected - Another round of seltzer would have been nice.
Angered - Of course, the second-least-likable passenger sat in my
row. She cut in front of me, no acknowledgment, after we both stood up to
stretch and head out.
But since I could select only one
answer, I chose "Other" and specified Hungry.