Wednesday, April 07, 2004

T Minus Six Weeks

I talked to a human being about my missing stitching yesterday, and if you've ever wondered about how an airline's lost and found works, I'll be happy to share the news. First, they keep items left in a plane or in the waiting area at the gate for a week. (TSA and the airport have different policies for items left elsewhere.) Then they send it to baggage services. There, a lone employee tries to match up the descriptions with what they've got. One person. I guess that's good because then you don't have too many cooks spoiling the soup, but a lot of stuff gets left behind. I was the third person who had filed a claim with the gate agent in MHT. MHT doesn't really handle that many flights, so multiply an exponent by the number of flights in a day--and I lost my item in Charlotte, a hub airport--you can just imagine how much stuff gets sent to baggage services. If this finder-of-lost-things matches your item with your description, they'll mail it to you. No phone call; it will just arrive. This process can take 2-6 weeks. If, and the guy who I talked to really emphasized this, if someone turns it in. So I can't really say the stuff is missing for six weeks. I will be the eternal optimist. Now I am obsessing over whether I accurately described what I lost. Should I have been more specific? Should I have given them the whole list of everything that was in there? Should I have called it knitting or sewing instead of "stitching"? The first thing anyone will see when they open the case is packages and packages of needles (about 12). That should ring a bell with "stitching," right? And I put the quote from the needlework piece in the description. Now I just need the person to really dig through the case and open up the project. As far as I can remember, I don't have a card in there, although I may have stuck the cards of the Tulsa stitching crew in the bag. Each woman knows about the separation, so any of them would know whose bag it is if it accidentally arrives in her mailbox.

I didn't stitch last night. I made Easter cards instead.