I Hate Delta

I spent 21 hours at Sea-Tac Airport before I gave up on Delta Airlines completely. I was still flying on Kevin’s buddy pass and was optimistic about hopping a flight back to Atlanta so I could fly business class back to sweet Tokyo and get home in time to teach two days of elementary school.
Delta overbooked every single flight that week by at least 3-10 people. The people who gave up their seats were put at the top of the standby list and moved to the next flight. As were the next group of people, and the next, and the next. This left me eternally at position 24 on the standby list – I never saw the inside of a plane. I slept in the airport, hoping that the early morning flight would be able to take me to Atlanta even though I had already missed my flight to Tokyo. I would have to spend the night in Atlanta and wait for the Friday morning flight back instead. Whatever, I reasoned, I just needed to get out of Seattle.
I spent that night on a bench, freezing and sobbing. I didn’t want to call family to pick me up because I didn’t have the energy to be driven somewhere else, driven back, and have to go through security again. But it felt like I was never going to get out of that terminal, so I didn’t know what else to do.
After finally telling my family that I was stuck at the airport and having the remnants of my optimism completely crushed by the lack of empathy from the staff and the situation itself, my dad helped me buy a new plane ticket with a different airline for the next day. I booked a hotel room and left the airport, having gotten nowhere at all in all that time.