Not That You Asked (9780307822215) (11 page)

Rage comes easily to people under the circumstances found on commercial airlines. Plane interiors have been redesigned so the cabins are incredibly crowded and uncomfortable. There are too many people jammed into too little space, often on a hot aircraft. The claustrophobia factor is high. You're trapped in a confined space, bumper-to-bumper with several hundred strangers. Baggage service is so bad that too many people have brought too many bags on board and there's no room left to store a necktie. If an airline cabin were a prison, it would be illegal.

The food in flight is no longer fair. The thought of asking the attendants for anything beyond their routine is out of the question. They simply don't have the time to do it. You're lucky if they have the plate off your lap before you land.

On a Delta “dinner flight” I took, cocktails weren't served until after dinner … which is as appealing as having dessert for breakfast.

First-class flight is prohibitively expensive for most people and I'm one of them. I have flown what they call “business” class several times. That's expensive too and not nearly as good as the so-called tourist or economy class of ten years ago.

The pilot always politely suggests you stay in your seat with your belt fastened, ostensibly “for your own safety,” but practically because they've jammed too many seats in the plane and the aisles are so narrow there's no room to move around in the cabin. You're lucky if you can get to the bathroom.

If the mechanics are being pushed as hard as the ticket agents and the flight crews, there is no way mechanics can maintain those airplanes in good condition. Maintenance must be on the same level of quality as everything else. If that's true, we're in for trouble … by which I mean there are going to be lots more crashes in the next few years.

Airlines, chronically behind schedule, ought to be ordered to list travel time instead of flight time. Their schedules should read from the time they tell you to be there, not from the time the flight is supposed to take off. What difference does it make that the flight is scheduled for five hours if it leaves an hour late and you have to be there two hours in advance of the scheduled departure? For practical purposes, your travel time is eight hours.

On a recent American Airlines flight of about no miles that takes thirty-five minutes in the air, I paid $99 for a one-way ticket and was told to show up half an hour before flight time. I got there nine minutes before flight time and the gate to the plane was closed.

I complained to the people at the desk. They rapped on the window, and got the ground personnel to bring the stairs to the small commuter-type airplane back down.

“What time do you have?” I asked the man who had closed the door.

“I don't know,” he said. “I don't have a watch.”

I suggest that American Airlines make the ownership of a watch mandatory for people in charge of closing doors on time.

Don't fly if you're looking for a good time.

It finally happened. I dreaded the day but I knew it would happen sooner or later. My credit card didn't pass.

The item I was buying was a tent costing $64.95. We're replacing the old garage that used to be an icehouse, up in the country, and I had to empty it out. I was buying a tent as a temporary storage place. I didn't have $64.95 cash with me so I took out my Chemical Bank
Visa card. There were several people behind me in the cashier's line. I hated to hold them up with a credit card, but I had no choice.

The young woman at the cash register did the thing where they put your card in the little printing press and pull the handle to get a duplicate of it. She typed some number off my card into a device that looked like an adding machine and waited. Finally she looked up at me and said, “I'm sorry, sir. Your credit has been stopped.”

I looked at the next person in line behind me and laughed nervously.

“Boy, these banks,” I said, suggesting that it was just a bookkeeping mistake by the bank. A wonderful person like me would never have failed to pay a bill.

An assistant manager came along.

“Here, give me the card, I'll call,” he said.

He called some Visa main office, waited a minute, then turned and said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Rooney. You have an unpaid outstanding balance. You can't charge anything.”

By this time the people in line behind me were impatient.

“There must be some mistake,” I said as I walked sheepishly out to my car without the tent. I could feel all the eyes in the store following me. They might as well have had my name up in neon lights with bells and sirens going off:
ATTENTION. ATTENTION. ANDREW A. ROONEY DOESN'T PAY HIS BILLS
!

Driving home, I remembered a letter I'd recently received from the bank. I pay bills to individuals the day I get them, but I'm apt to leave institutional bills in a pile of undone things. Apparently I'd done that with my Visa bill.

The late notice, which I found the next morning, said, “The amount overdue on your account is $5.00. Please see that payment is made within the next five days. Sincerely, Collection Department.” I doubted a collection department's sincerity but I remembered getting the notice now.

I realized I had to do something about this cloud hanging over my financial reputation so I set out to pay it quickly.

For a year I've been paying my Visa bill by phone but I'd lost the number. I finally got the phone to ring at the Collection Department and was greeted by a recorded message.

“Thank you for calling Chemical Bank,” it said. “All our agents are busy. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered by the first available agent.”

Nine minutes of terrible music later, Mrs. Piro answered. Mrs. Piro had never heard of being able to pay by phone.

“Let me give you my supervisor,” Mrs. Piro said.

This time it was only six minutes of recorded music later before Mrs. Hobbs came on the line.

Mrs. Hobbs did not think it was possible to pay my Visa bill by phone either, but because I'd been paying them that way for a year by transferring money out of my Chemical checking account into my Chemical Visa account, I knew she was wrong.

“I'll give you the number for Customer Service,” Mrs. Hobbs said. All agents were busy again but the music was livelier and, when Mrs. Manza finally answered, she agreed that it could be done by phone.

I exonerated myself forthwith, but those people who stood in line behind me yesterday will never think of me as an honorable man again.

And, if it rains, all the good junk in the garage will get wet because I don't have it under a tent.

One of the most frustrating jobs known to man is trying to get information out of an insurance company. Insurance companies are faced with so many people trying to cheat them that you have to be a little sympathetic to their efforts to protect themselves. But boy do they protect themselves! And let's face it—insurance companies have us where they want us.

Six weeks ago I had surgery to correct a hernia. Before undergoing surgery, I went to an internist, who gave me a very thorough examination.

You don't shop around trying to find the cheapest doctors when you're having work done on a body you can't turn in for a new one. Both the internist and the surgeon I used are the very best kind of representatives of the medical profession. They are not only medically expert but socially aware. It gives me a lot of confidence in both of them that they are each other's doctors.

The charge for the medical examination, including all the tests that went with it, was $314.

I paid the doctor by check and sent in the Prudential Insurance
Company forms for reimbursement. In two weeks Prudential sent me a check … for $11.20.

“Your family deductible,” the form said, “is now satisfied.”

Well, OK, but obviously Prudential was more satisfied than I was.

The surgeon's charge for the operation, a hernia with minor complications, was $1,550. It did not seem out of line for an outstanding surgeon in an expensive part of the country.

I paid the surgeon, and this time the Prudential check came with a semi–form letter. It said:

“Your group plan provides only for reimbursement of usual and prevailing fees.

“In determining a usual and prevailing fee, we refer to statistical profiles of physicians' charges for the same or similar services in the area.”

The check from Prudential for the surgeon's fee was for $840. They pay 80 percent of the figure they assign to the operation … $1,050.

I decided to try to find out more about the billing. I talked to three people at Prudential, then to an administrator at the hospital, a Blue Shield executive, two people at the State Commission on Hospitals and Health Care and four doctors, not including either of mine.

The doctors said $1,550 was a normal charge.

The Prudential people were polite but evasive.

In answer to my question “How do you determine ‘usual and prevailing,' ” they hedged.

“It depends; we have different ways.”

“We divide the country into two hundred and fifty-two areas and do it that way.”

The nice young man whose name was at the bottom of the letter finally said, “Gosh, I probably shouldn't be talking to you about this at all.” He must have thought he'd given me some information, and that's the last thing an insurance company wants one of its employees to do.

When I complained to another about getting only $840 back on the $1,550 bill I paid, he said, “We update our ‘usual and prevailing' rates every quarter. You probably just missed an update.”

My employer provides the insurance coverage, so I spoke to the company expert and got the biggest surprise of all.

Prudential, he said, doesn't really insure me. My company pays the medical bills. All Prudential does is the book work for a fee. My employer “pays” Prudential about $58 a month for each employee, but it's only a bookkeeping figure. Actually, he said, my employer deposits
that amount in a bank account out of which medical costs are paid. It must be a common practice but I'd never heard of it and was surprised to find my company in business with an insurance company. Obviously my company doesn't mind when Prudential keeps the costs down.

The whole episode wasn't a total loss. I got my hernia fixed and I feel a lot better. Even though I never found out how the insurance company decided I'd only get back half what I'd paid out, I learned something.

That's about as good as you can expect to do.

Last weekend I was making my 150-mile drive north from New York City when a nut in an old red Camaro came careening through the traffic behind me. He must have been doing ninety.

As he came nearer, I pulled closer to the truck in front of me, thinking it would keep the Camaro from cutting in. It didn't and the driver made a dangerous move as he veered into the narrow gap between me and the truck, forcing me to hit my brakes. He immediately cut to the inside of the truck, passed that and flew on.

I was still simmering mad four miles down the road when I saw the flashing red lights of a cop car pulled over to the side of the road. He'd caught the smart alec in the red Camaro! It is the kind of event that makes it impossible not to take pleasure from someone else's misfortune. I was delighted.

There was time enough for me to slow down and room enough for me to pull up next to the police car, where the officer was sitting, writing a ticket. I rolled down my window and, as the surprised officer looked up, I yelled, “I hope he loses his license!”

I pulled back on the highway and drove off, hoping I never meet the driver of the red Camaro in a dark alley.

There has been a recent rash of shootings on California highways and several times a year you read the story of an argument between drivers in a minor accident that leads to a fight or a shooting.

If you're a driver, you can understand how it happens. My angry reaction to the driver of the Camaro was a symptom of the same disease that leads to shootings. In the course of any trip you take, long or short,
some other driver does something you think is wrong. If you're an aggressive driver, you're angry. Go get 'em, cowboy! You have this weapon in your hands, your car, and your tendency is to use it.

“I'll go get him and cut him off at the next light … give him a taste of his own medicine.”

Some drivers are saints. They plug along slowly but surely and nothing bothers them. They're not competitive with everyone else on the road. They don't anger easily.

These safe and sane drivers are, unfortunately, often responsible for the accidents other drivers have and they are not always good at handling their cars. The slow, cautious driver arouses unreasonable resentment from me when I'm behind the wheel and I'm convinced they cause many of the accidents. I hate to say so but the nut in the red Camaro knows more about how to handle his car than the very slow driver does.

There are a handful of driving maneuvers that bring out the worst in me. Traveling at five or ten miles an hour above the legal speed limit, which is average in America, I keep a respectful distance from the car or truck ahead of me. I hate it when another car passes me on the right or left and pulls into that space, forcing me back.

When someone who has just passed me slows down at an intersection and waits until he has started to make a turn before putting on his turn signal, I lay on my horn in protest. By the time he starts turning, he no longer has to put on his flasher to let me know about it. He's too late.

“You dumb SOB,” I mutter under my breath to nobody. I'm not a nice person in a car.

The best truck drivers are better than the average passenger-car driver but there are some terrible ones. Some enjoy coming up a mere eight or ten feet from your rear bumper. If you hit the brake, you're going to have a truck in the backseat. Truck drivers do this to let you know you're in their way and that they own the road.