Full disclosure.

Delta Flight 276 departing Haneda 令和五年13 July Friday

Full disclosure.
First time writing a blog post on an airplane.
The following is intended for mature, infantile audiences.

Welcome home Jason.

I am seated between two Asians, one Phillipina. One was enough.

So a buddy of mine, who pretends to be nameless, paid for my flight to The 𝝅. Twice. If you’ve ever had an apple, it’s not.

There was a service worker. Well, there were several service workers. In one night. On multiple nights. Never mind. Who’s counting?

The way it usually worked was, one enters the beverage supplier. One takes a seat, and one watches the show. When one likes what one wants, one indicates one’s selection, and the service worker, if so inclined, is directed to the table to have a few beverages with the honoured guest.

After enough chit chat, if the service worker is still willing, the servicer worker and the customer go elsewhere. In my experience that elsewhere had a happy ending. Until it didn’t.

At one finer establishment, I followed the usual protocol. Two service workers and I appeared to have a meeting of the minds. One curious thing about a meeting of the minds is if one or two of three minds appears to have a meeting of the minds and later claims there was no meeting of the minds, whose to mine? it sho’ ain’t apple.

Who controls the meeting? The mind that just didn’t meet, even if that mind appeared to meet. Doesn’t seem like justice to me, but it just is.

Samuel Johnson was the Oprah Winfrey of Victorian England. He said,

Sounds like a Dick. Or Richard. Whatever.

My point is, whoever doesn’t have a meeting of the minds is in complete control of the lack of meeting only if the person who did have a meeting thinks the non-meeter had a mind, the mind. That is to say, evidence of harassment resides primarily in the mind(s) of the accuser.

So there we are in bed, two service workers and I in my hotel room, naked as the day we were born. We get a little busy. & busier. Service worker 1 claims she has to go and leaves. unServiced. Service worker 2 then claims that the good ol’ fashioned Adam & Eve stuff with PPE that has been part of the deal was not part of this deal. Okay. I paid for two service workers, got 0. The implicit K that had held for every other encounter for more than one visit to The Pi is not to be honoured this time. Kind of like if you paid for a Big Mac and they told you no, except The Big Mac paid them and they told me no.

So we have a second amicable retreat from my hotel room, and I go to sleep. Next morning, I return to the purveyor’s establishment for a refund. Not gonna happen. I ask to see the manager. Manager, if there was one, was not to be found. I don’t think there really was a manager. The place just seemed to run itself. Very horizontal.

Every horizontal can go ballistic. I am being polite, however, I am being New York insistent. Upstate style. One of a long line of proprietor employees tells me for the umpteenth time that I am not going to get a refund. I follow xes back into the inner sanctum’s hallway and realise I am surrounded by a wee bit of candy, almost all of it scantily clad, which, given my sweet tooth, causes a reaction in me. Talk about 一心伝心 and emotional transference. I think I might have looked at one of the scantily clads closest to me and gave a winning smile while I said "Hullo." Just then xhe turns to face me, and as I blurt out yet another request for a refund, xhe lifts xes right hand, a hand bejewelled with generous fingernails, and proceeds to drag them down my face. If you’ve ever had four claw marks down the centre of your face, you know what I looked like the next several days. Makes a good empathy story when you go to the next purveyor.

Fortunately, the doctor they sent to my room was not expensive, and he had such a nice little bum.

Now, being the persistent sort of ijiot I have been for 60 years, I won’t let this rest. I go to the sherrif, which, coincidentally is just across the street from the aforementioned purveyor. I spend a considerable amount of time over more than one visit filing the complaint, explaining in laborious detail and protesting as well as I can to justify my time and expense of having gotten a graduate legal education. No reaction.

While going on about the business of my holiday, flogging my one-sided cat fight story to whomever will listen, I am informed of the identity of the sheriff. It’s the guy whose establishment won't refund my money.