Rating the Admiral's Club (Dinner in Dallas)
Rating the Admiral's Club (Dinner in Dallas)
The Incidental Tourist
Of the five local chapters of the Admiral’s Club that I visited, the largest, by far, was the one moored at Terminal D of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. (Yes, Virginia, everything is, indeed, bigger in Texas.) Thanks, moreover, to an aircraft engine that refused to do what such sub-assemblies ought, I spent more time there than at any other lounge in the flotilla.
The time-honored tenets of incidental tourism require that devotés who receive the gift of an extended layover devote it to exploring. However, so eager was I to turn to on my Substack duties that I neglected to scope out the entirety of the lounge before docking myself in one of the capacious cubicles in the business center. Thus, two hours passed before I discovered that, in addition to the three nook-nestled snack stations that fueled my writing (one for soup, another for coffee and soft-drinks, and a third for crudités, cold cuts, and cheese), the lounge also sported a proper buffet and a full-bore bar.
As I had made a meal of the aforementioned nibblestuff, the delay in my discovery of the buffet did little to diminish my enjoyment of the lounge. Likewise, my custom of limiting myself to one or two potent potables per annum meant that I shed no tears over the watering hole I missed. Indeed, the chief cost of my eagerness to open up the ol’ laptop had less to do with any failure to explore, than my inability to understand something I could not help but see.
Between the entrance to the lounge and the abode of comfy chairs, eight or so uniformed employees occupied the mother of all service counters. Eager, as I was, to get to work, I did not realize that these good people, who did not seem to have much to do, sat ready to help me with reservations, connections, upgrades, and the like.
Thus, as I waited for the mechanics to work their magic on the errant engine, I spent far too much time running out of the lounge to consult with the hard-pressed agents at my gate. Moreover, when the last of these proved unable to help me, I found myself in a very long line at a customer service center, larping as a babushka in a Soviet bread line.
The good people at the customer service center took good care of me. In particular, they provided a suitable substitute for the connection that I missed. However, I find myself thinking that, had I taken my trouble to ponder the mystery of the corporal’s guard of airline employees, a less-harried, and more experienced, ticket agent might have found me a better way to get home. At the very least, I would have saved myself a great deal of ‘hurry up and wait’.
For Further Reading:
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mother of all service counters - MOASC?
It’s akin to a kiosk, only grander.