In the second part of the Be My Guest series, Kathy Sheridan deals for a day with customer problems and complaints at Dublin airport - where she discovers everything is her fault
So you want to know where to find the "jacksie" ("and quick, missus, for jaysus sake")? The "exact place where they found the 'bomb'"? The Slovakian for "lost" or possibly "stolen" ticket? Ask me, I'm Kathy.
Yes, that deranged-looking one in the strawberry-pink shirt, with "Customer Care" emblazoned across the back. A pink-shirted sitting duck this particular morning for about 8,000 semi-hysterical/ semi-comatose folk, who rejoice in catching Ms Customer Care's attention by poking her in the kidneys. And it's still only 7.30am.
The earliness of the hour, the fact that "Customer Care" is not on the front of the shirt, and a life-long instinct to steer clear of shouty strangers at airports probably explain an unfortunate tendency to forget why one is here. The urge to bark "Do I look like Martin Bloody Cullen?" (which in view of the 5am start, could well elicit a "yes") at every supplicant must be contained.
More than 100,000 people will come and go from Dublin airport today and most of them appear to be going to Crete or Greece, depending on where they imagine Heraklion to be; the rest seem to be off to Larnaca. Alternatively, there may be a mere few hundred going there but this lot happen to be more, eh, disorientated than anyone else.
A young fellow who has clearly had a few nerve-settlers (or a hard night) comes up and says "I need to get on the plane". Separated briefly from my minder, I decide I can handle this.
Who are you travelling with, I ask caringly? "Eh . . . me mates. Why?" he asks warily, looking around for reinforcements. "No, I mean which air . . ." Whereupon two elderly Englishwomen move in: "We have tickets. We now want our seats," declares one imperiously.
"Where's the bank gone to?" asks a virtually clothed young one, catching my attention with just a minor dig in the kidneys.
Brendan McElhinney, a proper Mr Customer Care, takes them in hand, painstakingly directing the young fellow to the charter ticket office (virtually invisible to the naked eye, to be fair), the women to an interminable check-in queue and the girl to wherever the bank has relocated itself - downstairs in arrivals, possibly.
Meanwhile, area 13, where all the jumbo-sized American flights are being checked in, is bedlam. Before they can even join the check-in queues, hollow-eyed passengers have to queue for security interviews. The queues build, spread and merge with those in area 12, as trolleys are hauled forward, plunged into people's ankles, blocking any remaining millimetres of walkway.
It looks hopeless - but this is where the Pink Shirts come into their own. They pull cordons around to separate the queues, narrow the lines to prevent queue-jumping, tidy in the trolleys, reassure anxious travellers that they will get to Newark.
A worried young man queuing for tickets at an airline office comes up to ask where the ticket assistant has disappeared to. It's none of a Pink Shirt's business but we look anyway, while the queue builds. (He's off fixing a ticket machine destroyed by some "playful" children).
Two Slovakian men with about two words of English arrive with a Garda escort. The gardaí are under the impression that they were reporting stolen tickets. After consulting the men's enormous Slovak-English dictionary, it turns out that they want a flight to Vienna and are happy to pay.
An hour later, area 13 is virtually empty. The system works. Somehow. The Pink Shirts have moved on - mostly to the chronic crush that surrounds areas 7 and 8, where more than 40 Ryanair flights will be checked in before midday.
A major contributor to the crush quickly becomes evident to this Customer Carer. People are turning up for flights hours too early, having been terrorised by travel agents and tales of overbooking, unforgiving staff, security delays and traffic tailbacks. What seems to be the entire passenger load for the Larnaca flight is languishing in a queue half an hour before the check-in desks are even due to open.
Ryanair, which doesn't allocate seats, encourages early queuers by offering them first dibs at seat selection on the aircraft. The upshot of the wheeze is blocking up the airport's main walkway.
It's 8.05am and Brendan spots a small, moustachioed man pushing a mountain of luggage, trailed by an exhausted wife and mutinous-looking family.
Only after several prompts - "Men won't ask directions. Ever," says Brendan - does the man cave in and ask how to get his tickets and the flight for Barcelona. No tickets are needed (it's an internet booking), explains Brendan, who also notices that there's no sign of a Barcelona flight on the board. Further checks reveal that the flight doesn't leave for four hours.
Everyone turns to look accusingly at Mr Moustache. "We'd only to come from Crumlin," the wife whispers. "That's what it's like being married to him. He has us up since seven. Army man." He retrieves command. "It's in the plan. Time for breakfast and a few pints," he announces, slapping his chest. "Army man," mouths the wife, trudging away.
Meanwhile, the long check-in lines infiltrating narrow circulation space on the main throughway and the queues for the ticket offices (mainly Ryanair's) opposite are creating choke-points that are mildly scary. It's single-lane traffic only as people pushing enormous luggage loads are stalled to allow the contraflow to squeeze past. Sometimes, it seems that weariness, vulnerability and a Pink Shirt are all that keep the natives from rioting.
At this point, Brendan is walking up and down a queue for Salou, asking if everyone in it is going to Salou. Apparently there are plenty of people who arrive at an airport and join a line. Any line. At one stage, he found 50 people in the wrong queue.
When an airline staffer decides to make two queues out of one and casually beckons those who were last in the old queue to the head of the new one, the middle section revolts. The airline is solely responsible for this silly provocation, but the passengers spot "Customer Care" and assume that the buck stops with Brendan. Next thing, six people are screaming in his ear.
It's a constant refrain from Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) staff. "We provide the infrastructure, that's all we do," sighs one. "but we get the blame for everything." The DAA's job is to provide the space, the infrastructure and an efficient security operation - which today seems to be operating smoothly.
A significant amount of the work of the 62 Pink Shirts - who are paid by the DAA - is mopping up the trouble caused by indifferent or thoughtless airline staff and handlers. For the record, the DAA is not responsible for lousy manners or delays at check-in, immigration, baggage collection or boarding. It's not its fault if airlines cancel flights or make a song and dance about wheelchairs or that the insane half-marathon which passengers must cover between Pier A and baggage collection is exacerbated by a further walk nearly the length of the baggage hall to collect their baggage.
All the stakeholders have obligations under a service level agreement (SLA), but this is purely voluntary, with no sanctions provision if an airline or handler decides that customer care comes a distant second to profit.
DAA's role has been compared to being the owner of a house who has no say over whom the tenants might be and no power to intervene when they give grief to the neighbours. To which the tenants might legitimately retort: if the landlord is incapable of providing an infrastructure fit for size and purpose, how can he have the cheek to blame others for the fall-out?
Despite the best efforts of passenger operations head Declan McCarthy to reclaim bits of the terminal from retailers and lobbies to create more circulation space and the plan to open another check-in area in the basement, the building is patently too small. Passenger numbers are running at 21.5 million this year, up three million in a year. McCarthy expects to add another 2.5 million next year. Watch out, Pink Shirts.
Are people too demanding? Part of the problem is that some people remember when flying was an elitist activity and expect to be able to travel as they used to, says Pat McNally, night terminal duty officer. Now, all human life is here.
A phenomenon of modern airports is the number of hen and stag parties coming through, says McNally. "At some stage, you'll nearly always see one who's left the party, half jarred, after a big row and she's back out here crying in the middle of the night that she wants to go home."
Meanwhile, Brendan is urging the Ryanair queue for Aberdeen to use the two check-in desks ("You always think that one desk is for first-class people," explains a passenger, clearly rooted in a previous era). A young student who left his rucksack down is stunned to see it has disappeared. Brendan directs him to the airport police. Eavesdroppers wince; controlled explosions come to mind.
In theory, travellers retrieve their brains once they pass through security and are safely airside. In practice, Ms Customer Care is mobbed by people looking for the toilet ("Just two yards from you. See?"), or for Pier A ("See that enormous sign?") or "somewhere for coffee" (I give up). There is no let-up; the Pink Shirt is a beacon, a moving target. After seven hours, I reclaim anonymity with no little relief.
But Brendan thrives on it, while noting that in a recent survey of the worst jobs in Ireland, "customer service agents" came fourth in the list (deep-sea fishermen came first).
The happiest customers, he says, are Americans. "They understand that they have to be in a queue and that they have to answer questions. They'll stand in a queue for hours," he says dreamily. Among those least likely to complain are the groups: "They're comatose from the partying or just too tired."
The ones to be wary of are those like the group back at the check-in desk who were ignored by the staffer when forming a new queue. Here be monsters.
Series continues. Tomorrow: Arminta Wallace on the front line at Killarney International Youth Hostel. Wednesday: Róisín Ingle makes a few waves on the Viking Splash tour in Dublin. Friday: Rosita Boland becomes a bean an tí for a day at Bunratty Folk Park
The airport helper: highs and lows
Highs
Interacting with people
Being accosted by 20 hen party women who think that your pink shirt fits the occasion
Hearing the word "thanks" from time to time
Lows
Five or six people screaming at you together
Others who are afraid to break the bad news and duck for cover
A thousand foreign students having a trolley "bullfight"
