Africa, right?

The airport is always a lot. People are rushing or not rushing. Standing still or weaving through crowds. It’s a place where people go to escape or to return. To go off adventure or come back and ruminate.

Many different people are rotating in and out of those doors, so it was strange to have this experience with one of the attendants while I was having a hard time using the self check-in machine.

That machine is a whole different story. It was aggressively unintuitive and the instructions were sparse. I’m not sure how anyone was able to check-in without assistance, but I digress.

Anyway, back to the person who helped me and subsequently surprised me.

My machine was flashing a message that let me know I needed assistance. The first thing he asked me for when he came over was a Visa. So, I rummaged through my wallet to show him the card I used to buy the ticket. He looked at it perplexedly, and then said, no I mean your passport. I chuckled at myself in the moment but that was really strike one. Oh, I said, I thought you meant my credit card. No, he said, slightly amused. He left and I continued the check in process poking at the screen, entering all of my info until I came again to another roadblock. I looked around and he was close by, helping other people with this horrendous check-in machine. We made eye contact. How can I help miss, he asked, focused and ready to assist.
“It’s asking for my email and address but I can’t keep going.”
“Did you put in the country?”
“Yes.”
“Two letters?”
“Yes.”
He finished up with the person he was working with and they went off triumphantly as he walked over and took a look at my screen.
“Country?” He asked again. He pressed some areas of the screen, “Africa, right,” he asked distracted. I didn’t say anything as he continued assessing.
“Ah, forget it. You can hit cancel.”
I nod.
He hits cancel, “I don’t know why it wasn’t working. That’s a new screen.”
“Oh. Well thanks,” I grab my baggage tag and attach it to my bag and he’s already walked off attending to other struggling people.

I’m not sure if it was because he was distracted or stressed out but the situation was uncomfortable now that I think back to it. I mean I appreciate his help because otherwise I probably would have been there for another 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get that thing to work. I’m going to chalk up what he said to an honest misunderstanding but in this world of high tension, it’s hard not to ignore instances like this. Anyway, I’m in France. We’ll see what kind of interesting stories I’ll have to tell from here.