@Englishee Teacher: ha - no. But I probably look like a harmless 20-something 'young lady' to all the retirees. Which I am. Maybe they know that I am listening to NPR on my headphones.

Supermarket small-talk startles me. I'm not used to it!

Further confusing things are two factors: Delta and NW keep swapping routes, just as any two "separate" companies can do with their own items. On top of that, more and more NW planes are painted in the DL livery, but they are still NW planes on NW routes. Add to this codesharing by the two, just as they do with many other airlines such as Air France, and you have a recipe for confusion.

The last line of defense against confusion is the front-line employees, and it is becoming obvious that they have not been empowered to help as much as they should, plus there is strife over unionization and other factors such as size 18 uniforms...LOL

It's not been a smooth merger, but it's the largest in history and mistakes will happen. Plan a little extra time with them for the next 6 months and all will be back to "normal."

I've only been asked once for help with something (by a guy in a wheelchair for help getting milk, not a big deal), but I did overhear a customer ask where the toys were and the employees didn't know so I pointed them in the right direction. I really hope that was a new employee.

I also line up stuff and what not. I've only been cashiers and tellers, so its not from habit, but because I shop at Walmart around 2 am when they're stocking and feel terrible when I ruin a perfect isle. I do it most of the time now, and it really irritates me when people decide they don't want an item and just drop it where they happen to be instead of put it back. Same with carts in the parking lot, except in the back. There are no cart holders in the back of the parking lot.

Actually NW has moved over to the Delta Terminal (T5) at LAX so you will be flying into and out of the same Terminal. Only KLM has stayed over at Northwest's old T2.

And dimdngal1, I'm sorry you had those problems with the whole car seat/window rule! EVERYONE should know that in the airline business, CSRs as well as inflight. It's just as important as the psychological reason why some memebers of the same family cannot sit in an exit row while other members of the family are scattered elsewhere on the plane: if it actually came to an emergency situation, the family member in the exit row is going to be more focused on getting to his/her family than actually opening the emergency exit.

Almost all airports have been integrated into one airport checkin area, but NWA has a link on its website to help customers figure out where to check-in:

www.nwa.com/merger/airports/

You just have to make sure you check your itinerary closely. Sometimes on a codeshare itinerary you will see, for example, "DL3501 Operated by Northwest Airlines" or "NW9005 Operated by Delta Air Lines".

When in doubt, check online under "My Reservations" or contact Northwest at 1-800-225-2525 or Delta at 1-800-221-1212.

Kind regards,
Mark

@parad0x360:
I'm one of those types who seems to resemble your average everyday retail employee. I'll get asked all the time, "Do you work here?" when I'm out shopping.

By the way, "That's not my job/department." is a feasable answer. Most employees are usually only trained in one area of knowledge, not the entire store. However, the correct follow-up sentence to that should be, "...but let me find someone who is from that department for you."

The rest of the stuff sounds like supermarket small talk... do you happen to be incredibly attractive?

Could they be doing things smoother for the consumer experience, yeah probably.

But speaking as a professional pilot, the industry is facing a worse situation than before the recession first hit. Now Legacy Airlines (the big 4) are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Meaning they have low demand (lack of general consumer spending), high operating costs (Oil -> Jet fuel prices steadily increasing) and low fare pressure from LCC airlines. (Low cost / low frills airlines: Southwest, AirTran, Spirit, etc...)

Before deregulation (circa 1970) airline ticket prices were set by the government based on the actual cost of providing the air travel service.

If you want to stop being nickel & dimed by airlines, consumers will have to support one of 2 actions:
1) Fly only airlines who have the lowest or no fees, &/or choose airline tickets based on the company who is providing the travel.
or
2) Support &/or influence elected officials to re-regulate (partially or fully) domestic air travel fares to prevent competing airlines to offer fares BELOW COST in order to kill competition on routes.

Bank of America LOVES doing this. In fact, in the 3 years I have been working here, every merger we've done has been like this. We bought a local bank in Illinois, and rebranded all of their local branches before the accounts could even come up in our computers. People would call us, wait for up to half an hour sometimes, just to be told we can't help them, and to call somewhere else. I got yelled at more times than I care to remember. Freakin sucks.

I guess the only thing we as consumers can learn from it all is that when a company announces a merger, its often a long, arduous process and you should just treat both companies like they are seperate companies until a customer service rep says its ok.

Though really, if you're gonna merge with another company, you should just shut the hell up about it until you really have merged.

@Doug Aamoth:

Woah,, like someone else said, that must have been awhile ago.

I am a Boston based Medallion on Delta (67,000 miles this year alone) and everything is under one roof. Worse case, NWA used to fly out of Terminal E and Delta A. The two terminals are literally a 5 minute walk via covered sky-bridge with moving walkways, so, you could have made your flight easily (only if you were already running late to begin with would you have missed it)

Anyways, ALL Kiosks should have been updated with the new software now allowing you to choose NWA or Delta before you begin the whole check-in process. Yes,, its slightly confusing,, but, not life changing as some people make it out to be.

@starbreiz: People - mostly elderly ladies - ask me for help in the supermarket. I tend to do my shopping on Friday early afternoons, so there are a lot of retired folk. People have asked me for help removing things from the top of a shelf, if I thought the seasoned breadcrumbs would be too salty, which type of pasta is better (linguine vs. spaghetti), and one sweet Spanish speaking lady was extremely confused by new packaging on the powdered coffee creamer. She wanted to know if it was still the same product.

I'm new here, so I chalk it up to the local color. Maybe people are just more chatty. But they are pretty insistent about getting help, even if it means I have to remove my headphones or show them that I'm on the phone.

I'm flying LAX to Detroit on the redeye on Wednesday night and am now duly terrified. I did find out that we're flying out of Delta's terminal in LA (thanks to Orbitz, which at least keeps me informed about where and when I'm going).

@starbreiz: Not to start an Apple fanboy flamewar, but never wear a black t-shirt in an Apple store because the same will happen to you. Happens to me every now and then, and since I'm kind of a Mac nerd anyway, I'll help 'em out.

Fast forward to two weeks later: Checked-in with Delta and they told me to fix my seats at the gate. Gate agent said she could only fix my seats on the first flight: "You'll have to talk to Northwest when you get to Atlanta." Even when I finally found the right person to talk to in each of the airports, I was told there were no rules regarding car seat placement on the plane (which is untrue - both websites list restrictions). Even the actual flight crews knew the rules and policies and were eternally grateful I took the time to run around and make sure our seats worked out -- they spend a lot of time shuffling around once on the plane.

It's annoying enough to fly 5,000 miles with a toddler... I don't understand why the "same" company can't help me even with their own flights?! The whole merger has become an excuse for even crappier customer service and ambivalence toward the fliers.

I spent a total of 2 hours at various airports, as well as over an hour on the phone during my trip trying to get everything sorted out and all I got was the run-around and total snottiness (two gate agents were downright rude). I wrote to Delta-west to advise them of the situation (and that most of their employees are unaware of policy) but haven't heard anything. I know it might sound trivial, but if you were the person sitting at the window, you might think differently.

@parad0x360: I think people who have worked in retail have a particular swagger about them when in a retail enviroment, and this bodylanguage just gets attention from customers.

I worked in retail for years in high school, and now i still get asked for help in stores when I am wearing nothing even like the uniform, it also doesnt help that I have OCD like tendancy to properly line up product and pull product forward if its back...

Nightmare, indeed.

What else are you supposed to tell them if you really don't work there?

/Gets asked alot b/c of the keys on my belt.
/Also once when I was vacation because I look like a parking lot attendant?

@Scuba Steve: Nah, I'm fairly sure they recognised me. I was the only female cart attendant at my store, and I worked there for several years, so I think a lot of people remembered me.

I learned the hard way not to wear a red polo in Target. I had about 3 people as me a question, and I had to say I didn't work there. When the fourth person did it, I just helped them.

@coolteamblt: Those people aren't the customers though.. thats your manager.

The whole flight was a disaster, minus the actual disaster like qualities of crashing thank goodness, but was a fairly unpleasant experience all around.

At least the Atlanta gate crew was nice. I mean, really nice. Excellent service there, unlike at the Tucson airport. Bunch of surly bastards.

@wrjohnston19283: I was asked that last week at Petsmart. I was wearing a sundress and holding my seven month old, and I just gave her the o_O face. Seriously, use your brain, people!

@Andrew Charron: I used to work at Target. People would expect me to help them when I was there on my day off, shopping, not in a Target uniform, chatting on my cell phone. They would be so pissed that I wouldn't go to the backroom and restock the front.

The wife and I show up for a flight we booked on Northwest's own website and are told that our flight is actually operated by Delta, which is located in an entirely different terminal. The guy points to our printout sheet (which is covered in Northwest logos) and says, "See, you can tell because your confirmation code starts with the letter D, which signifies that it's a Delta flight."

He then happily charged us $100 to switch to a Northwest flight that was leaving around the same time as the Delta flight we would have missed had we taken the time to walk all the way over to the correct terminal.

Just went on a trip, that was sold as a 'midwest' flight (YX airline), the was actually a Northwest Flight, that was actually flown by delta, but on the lest leg, it was a delta flight that was operated by some other regional airport.

@parad0x360:

Why? If you are walking around a store and someone asks you to check to see if they have something in stock, do you go do it for them?

@parad0x360: Why? I work at the local mall and frequently go to shop in other stores on breaks. I get people asking me for help all the time in these stores because they think I work there, even though I am not wearing a nametag or wearing the same clothes as the employees there. What would you like me to do? Sometimes "I don't work here" IS the correct answer.

Now Delta has come back down on their prices but their service is still abysmal. Lost/damaged luggage, fewer flights. We've gone back to not flying out of CVG and have had good experience with Air-Tran. I just wish we could have more competition but this economy doesn't make that seem likely.

Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Eazy-E have an airline?

It sounds like this may not be the case everywhere, but it's not a complete disconnect between the two. (Although, all 3 of those airports I mentioned were larger Delta airports before anyways, so that may have something to do with it)

I did notice that the websites are weird about that though. Delta would show some of the Northwest flights I was on, but I couldn't change seats. I had to go to the Northwest site to do that. That was back in February though.

@parad0x360:
I hate that. I also hate, "That's not my job". Grrrr. If everyone is wearing the same uniform, how am I supposed to know whose job is what?

No, what's worse is when you get someone who DOES work there, but they expect you to know their job and generally have insider knowledge of how their organization works.

One of the main things that separates man from almost all other animals is the ability to predict what other individuals know or could be thinking.

However, in many people, this ability is not well developed. They act on the assumption that other people know what they know.