It's quite rare to get Jude and Dave together these days. He lives in London, she lives in New York and ne'er it seems shall the twain meet. Unless of course somebody else is paying for the plane ticket.
There's a very odd thing that happens once your company starts to fly you around the world at great expense - you begin to believe that Business Class is the standard way to fly and that anything else is both 'slumming it' and somehow 'what I used to do before I earned the lounges, fawning and flat beds'.
You justify this in your head by thinking of business as a 'middle class' - not the ridiculous opulence and fake looking wood inlays of First and not the clot inducing tightness of economy.
Of course as soon as you have to put your hand into your own pocket and actually PAY for your own ticket things change. You take out your Gold cards, you start phoning people, you look for the upgrade and you chat too amicably to anyone in a uniform at the airport.
The card means that you can still use the lounge, so the idea of your being extraordinary is maintained and a fantasy of 'temporary slumming' and tales of 'no room in business' fill your head.
But what really happens is that you fly less. Fly less or not at all.
Which is why, I think, that the siblings see so little of each other. Whilst one really can't afford the time or the cash to fly in any class the other can't afford to 'fly right' and so neither do. It's a case of time and cash poverty meeting business induced snobbery. Though everyone involved will deny it.
Anyway I have jobs to turn down and scan payments to sort out (the hospital billed the wrong insurance company) so it's ciao from me
No comments:
Post a Comment