I had the wonderful honor of spending my last day in Chicago trapped in the O'Hare airport, waiting for my flight to officially begin my summer break home in Philadelphia. Now, I have flown quite a few times and have suffered some delays before. None like this though. I arrived at the airport at 5:30 in the morning, ready for my 7 a.m. flight.
I got through security and found my gate and almost immediately as I sat down at around 6:30, a flight attendant comes over the intercom and announces: "Flight #2775 to Philadelphia has been delayed until 2 p.m."
I'm sure you could imagine the despair I felt in this moment. We still didn't board on time, so by the time I actually got on the plane I had been sitting in the airport for 10 hours. 10 HOURS.
Now here are some tips for if you ever find yourself in this unfortunate situation.
1. Count the number of food voucher emails you receive
Yes, shortly after the delay was announced by phone was buzz buzz buzzing away from a total of 8 emails from the airline sending me meal vouchers. I went up to the gate to get these, thinking wow I can really fill up on airport food, yum. In reality, I was only given two meal vouchers that were only worth $10. You can't get much at the airport with $20. Here's to crappy airport eggs.
2. Cry to the flight attendants
We all do this when major delays come along. We beg if there's any other airline going to your destination, with the hopes of getting an earlier flight. It never works, but there is no harm in trying.
3. Check your grades about 8 million times even though you know your professors haven’t done anything yet
I was sitting in the airport just after finals weeks, literally one day after it was over. I thought I'd check to see if any of my professors we're trying to get their summers started too. None of them were.
4. Work on the comedy special that Netflix will eventually offer you
You become funnier with each traumatic event that happens to you, so I take it that I will one day become the funniest comedian of all time. Come on Netflix, come get me, I'm sitting here in O'Hare ready to sign a contract.
5. Walk around your terminal 100 times looking for something your $10 meal voucher can get you
My terminal had about a million stores to buy luggage? Who is buying luggage at the airport? There was also quite a few makeup stores with no samples, a Michael Kors store and obviously a place to buy shirts, mugs and whatnot that say "I Love Chicago." I considered buying a shirt for a little bit, but they all cost more than my own worth so I didn't.
6. Make really annoying snapchat and instagram stories
I'm not proud of this but ya girl really needed some entertainment, OK? Don't judge me.
7. Watch the entire season of something on Netflix
Is the Netflix reboot of "Arrested Development" good? No. Did I watch the whole season anyway? Yep. It killed a solid two hours, so I'm not entirely mad about it. Also, Michael Cera.
8. Download a bunch of games on your phone until your phone is out of space and then cry about it
Being trapped somewhere for a long amount of time makes me emotional. On the bright side, I'm on level 587 on Jelly Splash.
9. Make a lot of John Mulaney references
Ya know that John Mulaney joke about Delta Airlines? No? Well, maybe you should get up from under your rock and watch his Netflix specials already because you are missing out. For those of you who know what I am talking about, I literally lived out this joke yesterday. There I was, going up to the flight attendants crying "can I get on the plane now please?" and they yelled "no! Now take these meal vouchers that don't work" and I did. Thankfully I got out in time before they framed me for murder.
10. Just stare at your gate for a really long time
As 2 o'clock grew closer I just stared at my gate waiting to board. Like ya do when you've just been killing time for 10 hours.
We finally took off around 3:30, and I arrived home shortly after.
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