America’s Public Health Disaster

Every day seems to bring shocking news. Restaurants and schools close, conventions are canceled, overseas travelers face unexpected obstacles in coming home. The United States of America, like much of the rest of the world, is facing a crisis unlike any in our lifetimes. While I understand many of the protocols because of a background in disaster recovery, my intellectual and professional focus has dealt with natural disasters, not pandemics, so I will not claim any special expertise. I’d rather listen to the medical experts who have studied the issue in depth.

But at 70, I can relate on a personal level to the concerns of older citizens who are most at risk in a way that I know I never could have done at a younger age. While I remain physically fit, I am also aware that maintaining that fitness requires real effort, sometimes more effort than it might for someone half my age. More importantly, I have become more aware that a fitness routine does not guarantee immunity or invulnerability to some of the impacts of aging. Consequently, while exercising, not smoking, and a sensible diet can afford me significant confidence about facing a challenge like the current novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, pandemic, it guarantees nothing. All the recommendations about avoiding unnecessary travel, social distancing, and sanitary precautions still matter greatly in improving the odds against illness.

Already, I confess, some of the simplest impacts of aging have slowed down my production of this blog or at times made it more irregular than I would like, and that is despite no longer working full-time. I do some consulting, some writing, and some teaching, in various proportions, and my days are full, although much of my time currently is also devoted to a volunteer job—serving since January 1 as chair of the American Planning Association’s Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division. That presently has me involved in trying to disentangle commitments for some of our events at APA’s pending National Planning Conference in Houston, scheduled for April 25-28, preceded by some leadership meetings I expected to attend. Tonight, the APA board of directors canceled the conference. Our division executive committee had decided to cancel our division reception in Houston, only to learn that the restaurant planned to close anyway. Life is like that these days. A colleague and I were scheduled, as part of our APA division’s outreach program to planning schools, to discuss hazards in planning at a university graduate class later this month, but that shifted to possibly remote to simply waiting for another school year as most colleges have adopted online learning for the remainder of the spring semester. As I said, life is like that these days.

But back to the subject of aging. One learns we simply cannot control everything, no matter how hard we try. As I detailed in a July 4 blog post last year, life for me had generally gone along well until I began to realize in late spring that my sight was becoming fuzzier and clouded. What began with a visit to an optometrist in April to see if my prescription for eyeglasses needed updating ended in late June with cataract surgery in both eyes, and considerable lost time due to an increasing inability to read a computer screen. That put me weeks behind in preparing a transition of the University of Iowa graduate class in urban planning I teach each fall to an online forum, and with other factors coming into play as the year went on, I never got completely ahead of the curve until the semester was over in December.

But at least cataract surgery, in most cases, is a one-and-done proposition. You get the implants, you have new vision with only reading glasses for assistance, and life goes on. But by late fall, I learned that another malady would force me into hemorrhoid surgery, which took place immediately after the holidays. With certain complications due to an enlarged prostate gland, it sidelined me for the first half of January until recovery was complete.

Now, it may well be at this point that I will not face further difficulties for some years to come. I certainly would be pleased if that became the case. These were the first surgeries of my entire adult life, but they stalled my activities to some extent, and they are a small glimpse of the sorts of things that make many other seniors feel far more vulnerable than I do. It is small wonder that many of them fall victim more easily to scourges like the coronavirus. The elderly and the physically challenged have predictably proven far more prone to the severest consequences of COVID-19, including death.

We also know, however, that many other Americans, and many citizens of other nations as well, will suffer serious economic dislocation as a result of the restrictions placed on economic and social activity in order to stem the upward slope of infections and death. While U.S. accounting is hampered by the lack of testing kits and public access to testing in key regions of the country, the alarm bells are ringing loudly. As I write this, the number of confirmed cases has quintupled in the past week to more than 5,000. We do not yet have any idea when we will reach the peak of this frightening mountain, and how high that peak will be. But we already know that the far smaller nation of Italy has, as of this moment on March 17, more than 31,000 cases that have resulted in more than 2,500 deaths, despite doing far more in an effort to contain the spread of the virus. It is not that we have a smaller problem, but only that we may have begun our steep ascent a few weeks later. Nearly every day, new nations report outbreaks. This is clearly not a “foreign” virus, but a global pandemic.

We have built-in problems in the American system, most notably the lack of universal health coverage as a result of endless political spats over creating a system that better protects the working poor. Many of the restaurant and factory workers who may face layoffs will lose whatever coverage they had, or may no longer be able to afford it, at the very time when they are facing an existential public health threat. This threatens all of us with the possibility that some workers, unknowingly carrying the virus, may feel compelled to work if they can or simply be unable to visit the doctors they need to see. Our myopic approaches to health care have set us up for massive vulnerabilities in this regard. We seem not yet to fully understand that we are no stronger as a nation than our weakest links. One result of this crisis, however, may be a profound rethinking of the role of the federal government in ensuring some form of universal health care availability. The consequences of making health care unaffordable to the poor have never been laid bare before for us in the way that the coronavirus may do. Disasters can force soul-searching under the right conditions. The question is how deeply we are prepared to think about the issue.

The other question we have never faced before is how we will emerge from this crisis. After weeks or months of social distancing and self-isolation, how will we decide the time is right to emerge from our mental caves and greet other again, and join large crowds again? And how will we feel when we do it, and how comfortable will it feel? My hunch is that the human race is highly adaptable, but that there will be no very clear demarcation point when it is okay to say that the war is over.

This particular disaster may end not with a bang, but a whimper, followed by some happy parties among the most extroverted but also the most fearless, perhaps the most reckless, among us. I like to count myself a “compulsive extrovert,” my invented self-description, but I also like to think I know when to exercise some social caution based on circumstances. This may be a disaster where people like me eventually start to poke our heads out of the foxholes we reluctantly entered, not out of fear of social interaction, but to be sure the landscape is no longer infected.

But when the day comes, it will surely be nice to join a big party where the beer flows and greetings are plentiful.

Jim Schwab

Still Room for Improvement in the “Friendly Skies”

It has been almost a month since my last blog post, for a reason. I spent most of the remainder of July at a conference in Colorado, for four days, and then overseas, for nearly two weeks. My wife and I traveled to Norway for a vacation, and I chose to separate myself from my laptop for the duration. In coming weeks, I will produce some travelogue posts about that trip, as I have often done in the past. Norway has a great deal to offer for curious travelers.

But first, I want to describe some issues from an experience I am sure many other travelers have shared. Some aspects of this experience, I am sure, are an inevitable part of travel, which always involves the possibility of delays, whether from weather, traffic accidents, or equipment malfunctions, on highways, in the air, or on water. Other aspects are a function of corporate culture and the way in which airlines or other transportation providers choose to communicate with and respond to their customers.

Our flight from Chicago on July 15 began with United Airlines, on which I had used award miles to book both of us to Frankfurt, Germany, with connection on Lufthansa (a Star Alliance partner of United) to Oslo. United Airlines suffered earlier this year from a tsunami of negative publicity for its ill-considered removal of Dr. David Dao from a flight to Louisville, Kentucky, from O’Hare International Airport. The brutal dragging of this paying customer from his seat to make room for airline staff also besmirched the reputation of the Chicago Department of Aviation’s airport police, whose desire to become armed police suffered a long-term setback because of the incident. Followed by some inadequate corporate explanations before CEO Oscar Munoz finally issued a full apology, the incident made no one look good.

I mention this only because, in my opinion, the situation that evolved on our trip shows that United Airlines still has considerable room to improve in learning how to inform and serve its customers when problems arise. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 2:35 p.m., arriving at Frankfurt at 5:55 a.m., with a 7:05 a.m. connecting flight to Oslo. About one hour before that, I began to notice that no one was arriving to staff the original gate assignment, and the number of people present seemed modest for an international flight. Naturally suspicious, I rechecked the monitor in the hallway to discover that the flight had been moved to another gate. That happens, but I did politely ask at the new gate why I had not gotten a text from United, which routinely happens with all updates.

“You always have to check on gate assignments,” she said. I was aware of that—I have traveled a great deal over the years—but she did not really answer the question of why a routine update had not occurred via text. Instead, I got a reply that implied that I did not know any better. Thanks for the condescension, United.

It went downhill from there, as the United personnel learned that something was apparently awry with the engine on the aircraft and needed inspection. What followed was a slow drip of information that materialized in eight separate text messages that ultimately resulted in a departure at 5:30 p.m. In the absence of more definitive information in place of the assortment of 15- and 30-minute delay announcements, it was impossible to know at what point one’s connections would become impossible or, for that matter, which subsequent rebooked connection would be viable. Predictably, the lines for rebooking at both the gate and the United service center became long. At one point, one of the gate attendants checked on later flights and told me, “I’ve backed you up for 10:00.” What I learned later was that the phrase “backed up,” which I’d never heard before, effectively meant nothing. A new boarding pass in Frankfurt might have been useful. In the confusion and amid the crowd of frustrated passengers, getting better answers proved challenging, to put it mildly. Suddenly, in the end, before any of us knew what connections we would have in Frankfurt, airline personnel announced that boarding would commence. We were in the unenviable position of waiting until we got to Frankfurt to find out how we would get to Oslo. The only advice in Chicago was to go to the Lufthansa desk in Frankfurt (a huge airport) to find out. Our flight finally arrived in Frankfurt around 8:30, as best I recall. By then, I was more interested in facilitating the next leg of our journey than in recording the precise time.

Aboard the plane, those needing to rebook connections were told which gate to go to, but as we deplaned, a woman with a sign was telling the same passengers a slightly different gate. Where to go? Many of us ended up at the gate we were told as we got off, only to find that the Lufthansa attendants seemed even more preoccupied with serving passengers from a flight from Washington, D.C. One challenge in these situations is knowing precisely which line will best expedite your request without being able to just cut to the front to find out. When we did reach the desk, an attendant printed out something other than a boarding pass—I have by now tossed it and can’t remember what useless information it contained—and directed us down the hall to the “gate with the yellow signs.” I soon wondered if she was just getting rid of us because “down the hall” meant nothing. Every Lufthansa desk has yellow logos because that is their corporate color. We began to ask again, but we learned that the 10:00 a.m. flight that had been promised was at A52, which we could reach after going through Passport Control, which went quickly enough. But at A52, we were informed by a somewhat sympathetic Lufthansa agent that the flight in question already had a “wait list” of 30 people. So much for being “backed up” on the 10:00 a.m. flight. Soon, she made clear that she simply could not get both of us on the flight, and we made clear we did not want to fly separately, which would only mean Jean would wait in Oslo for my arrival, adding confusion to an already difficult journey.

When we made clear we would stay together, she directed us to A12 for rebooking. That became another interesting feature of communication involving signage. We reached a hall where signs to the right indicated A11 and below, while Gates 13 and above were to the left. Where was A12? We asked one middle-aged airport employee, who sounded like an American, about the gate and he pointed us to the left. Wrong—when we did not see it and asked at a gate, we were pointed back just behind where he had been. In fact, there was no sign for A12, but it was the Lufthansa service desk, not an actual gate. Why not tell us that to begin with? In any case, one friendly worker there tried to get us new boarding passes from one of the kiosks, but that did not work. We had to take a number (A3108) and wait for the electronic sign to tell us which of five desks would handle our problem. Fortunately, about ten minutes later, we were directed to a lady at the end of the wall. After shaking her head at one point, asking me at another if we had been booked with award miles, and discussing the matter by telephone in German with someone, she finally said, “You’re lucky. These are the last two seats on the 1:15 flight.” I thanked her; she had at least accomplished something for us. As for being lucky, I had mixed feelings. After so much non-direction and misdirection, and some other Lufthansa personnel adding to our growing feeling that customer service was not a high priority, I was no longer sure what “lucky” meant. But at least we knew when we would connect to Oslo.

Exhausted by then, Jean took a short hike down the hall from our new gate while I watched our belongings. We were getting hungry, so she bought hot dogs for both of us. That may have helped revive us a bit. We reached Oslo at about 3:10 p.m., got our luggage by 4 p.m., and caught a shuttle to the downtown Radisson Blu Hotel, and checked in by 5 p.m. We had lost an entire Sunday afternoon of sight-seeing that we may otherwise have enjoyed. Once we had stored everything in our room, we crossed the street to a Spanish restaurant, our only activity for the evening, and enjoyed tapas and Sangria and chatted with the waiter. Upon discovering that the trip was in part a celebration of my retirement, he arranged for a complimentary dessert of delicious flan with caramel sauce.

At least someone still knows what good customer service still looks like. The place is called La Sangria Restaurante Espanol. If you’re ever in Oslo, pay them a visit and tell them I sent you.

 

Jim Schwab

Fix the Little Things

I am writing this story about a week after the fact that triggered the idea for this blog post because I have pretty much been on the road (or in the air) ever since, and will complete the two-week stretch of travel tomorrow with a flight to Tulsa. On Monday, September 14, I will give the opening speech there for the Disaster Risk Reduction Ambassadors Pilot Workshop of the Natural Hazard Mitigation Association. It is not the biggest assignment in the world, but an important one.

The fact that I am on the move to that degree, however, has a great deal to do with the point of this story. To the extent that they can do so, frequent travelers appreciate the willingness and ability of airlines, rental car companies, and others whose clientele we are to make our journeys just a little bit easier instead of more challenging. In that context, sometimes a little bit of common sense goes a long way. I am not writing to pick on Budget Rental specifically, nor on the Sacramento International Airport, but I certainly am using them as an example of a problem because they provide a case in point.

I was in Sacramento September 3 to help deliver a pilot workshop, and then, because the rates were so much cheaper, chose to take a 6:00 a.m. flight on US Airways to Phoenix the next morning, followed by a connection from there back to Chicago, where I live. I might have liked a later flight with a shorter layover in Phoenix, but I also wanted to get home at a decent hour, it’s a long trip, and the alternatives were more expensive. Projects have budgets, and flights between Sacramento and Chicago seem to be rather costly these days. The workshop was almost 20 miles from the airport, so renting a car made sense. Budget had the best deal.

So on that Friday morning, I set my alarm for 3:00 a.m., got up and dressed, and packed, and was on the road back to the airport by 4:00 a.m. Traffic at that hour, even in California, is not much of a problem, so that went smoothly, and the GPS kept me painlessly on track. The problem arose only as I got near the rental return station, on McNair Circle, which is almost literally a circular area within which all the rental car facilities are located.

Then things went haywire. It is dark at 4:30 or 4:40 a.m., when I approached. I eventually saw a small sign along the side of the road listing all the rental firms for returns, but did not see an entrance behind that sign. I found myself circling McNair Circle, and coming in for a landing on a second try. Again, I saw the sign, but could not identify the entrance, although I had noticed an employee-only parking lot. On my third try, I pulled into that lot so that I could get off the street and call Budget to clarify the location of the entrance for rental car returns. I discovered that the envelope containing my contract had only an 800, not a local, number, but I tried it. I was soon launched into meaningless waits for no one in particular, and began to get nervous as I watched the time slip away toward 5:00 a.m., knowing that, even after I turned in the car, I would still need to board a shuttle into the terminal.

In the midst of my frustration, I saw a car enter and park, so I left my car and approached the gentleman, who was wearing a Budget shirt, and asked for directions to return my car. He told me to leave the parking lot, turn right, follow the circle, and turn right at the next entrance. I found myself skeptical but willing to try, having passed the same area twice already. But sure enough, before the sign I had seen earlier, I discovered a small entrance, somewhat shrouded in the dark by roadside foliage, and turned right. I drove back a small distance and discovered the return location and the same employee to whom I had spoken, but he did not handle the returns. In a minute, a young lady came out of the hut, relieving my anxiety because it was 5:00 by now and I was getting anxious to move on. I had carry-on luggage but still needed to go through security. One never knows how long that line will be.

As she checked the car and gave me a receipt, I hurriedly told her that the entrance was very poorly marked and hard to see in the dark.

“I hear that all the time,” she said, rather matter-of-factly. I did not argue the point, but in my mind, I thought, “And no one does anything about it?”

But my first priority by then was not to make an issue of it, but to catch the shuttle and get to the airport. I suspect most other patrons have done much the same thing. Fortunately, a shuttle was waiting in front of the main building, and I boarded. I mentioned my experience to a man sitting across the aisle from me as we departed.

“I agree,” he said. “I missed that entrance once myself.”

Now, I will confess that I have not checked further at either Budget or the Sacramento International Airport to find out who is actually responsible for the signage on McNair Circle or the visibility of the entrance for rental car returns. I have not had time, and having made myself clear at the time I returned the vehicle, I don’t feel I have to make it my responsibility. Nor did I have time to get out my camera and take photos of the entrance to make my point. My objective was to board my flight on time.

If Budget employees in fact hear this complaint as often as the young lady admitted, the problem should be obvious anyway. Whether it is ultimately the responsibility of the various rental car firms that share the space in McNair Circle, or that of the airport authority, does not matter to me. The firms and the airport officials undoubtedly talk to each other once in a while, or can. If well aware of a problem, they can put it on their agenda to fix it. But it is apparent that it may not be on any agenda if the lady at Budget hears this complaint “all the time.”

One might think that a company trying to make travel easier in order to attract customers would want to ensure that they do not leave in frustration because a problem like this goes unaddressed. I don’t care whose job it is. As I said, if they know people have experienced a problem repeatedly, they can talk to each other and find a way to resolve it.

Failure to respond is the real failure in customer service. Little things often matter in big ways. Fixing them shows that an agency or company cares. Enough said.

 

Jim Schwab

Bucket List from Down Under

 

It was one of those summer days this past Monday when I had been working hard to compose an online presentation and needed to come up for air. At a suitable point, I took a break and left my 12th-floor office in our downtown building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, headed for the elevator, and went downstairs to the plaza in front of our building. It was a sunny day but not too hot, with a slight, pleasant breeze, and one can sit among the flowers at various small metal tables anchored in the cement, on seats that are equally anchored to the tables. It was time to smell the roses.

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I looked for an empty table; it’s easier to find peace and quiet and less intrusive on someone else’s peace and quiet, though it means that five-sixths of the seats remain unoccupied when everyone does that, which they generally seem to do unless they are with someone they know. A woman was just leaving at one table, so I went there and sat down when she departed. I wanted to just look around and take in the scenery. Right now, some of that scenery involves construction on the other side of Michigan Avenue. A developer has been demolishing the old building at 200 N. Michigan for the last three months or more and is planning to build a new residential high-rise in its place. There is currently a big pit behind fences.

I was not alone for long. Looking for some place to sit, a gentleman about my age sat down, and I said hello politely. He was dressed considerably more casually and was very friendly. Somehow, a conversation began, which is not unusual for me because I am a gregarious sort, and so was he. I soon learned he was visiting Chicago as a tourist, had just recently flown in from Los Angeles, was originally form the United Kingdom, but was now living in Australia. His son was traveling with him and was somewhere nearby.

“We’re planning to drive Route 66,” he told me. I soon learned they were getting a rental car here in Chicago for a one-way trip back to Los Angeles. I had always thought of the Route 66 adventure as a uniquely American obsession, but I was about to learn otherwise.

“It’s been on my bucket list,” he said, “and now I’ll be able to cross it off.”

In contrast, I noted that I had not been to Australia, although I had been on a three-week visiting fellowship to New Zealand in 2008 with the Centre for Advanced Engineering in New Zealand at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. He asked if I had seen the earthquake, and I said that regrettably, I had not been back. But I also noted happily that I had toured much of New Zealand at the time as part of the fellowship, that I had loved it, and that I woke up every morning having to remind myself that “I was actually getting paid to do this.” Then I noted that the generous Kiwis had often bestowed on me, after each presentation, a bottle of locally grown wine.

“Some of the best wine anywhere,” he said joyfully.

Then he told me that they planned to visit the Arch while in St. Louis, though he initially referred to it as “the Arches,” perhaps confusing it with those golden ones at McDonald’s, and I noted for him that there is only one, but that you can take an elevator to the top to see St. Louis from a height of about 600 feet, as I recalled. He seemed to relish the forthcoming opportunity, as did his son, who by then had joined us. Both looked slightly scruffy, but only in the manner of tourists who are enjoying a great adventure.

I said that someday, perhaps, taking a boat all the way from the top of the Mississippi River to the Gulf might be on my bucket list. “Is it navigable that far?” he asked. I assured him that river traffic moves as far north as the Twin Cities, and that by the time the river reaches New Orleans, it is typically about two miles wide.

He contemplated that thought for a minute in silence, a smile growing on his face. They don’t grow such rivers in the UK, and most of Australia is too dry to generate such a volume of water.

“The mighty Mississippi,” he finally said.

Unfortunately, I only had about ten minutes for a break before needing to join a conference call, so I excused myself and left the man and his son to their enjoyment of the urban pleasures of Chicago. They were clearly relaxed and set for their great adventure, a chance to scratch something off their bucket list. I did not learn how long they planned to stay in Chicago or when they were starting their trip down Route 66. But right about now, the two may be crossing the bridge into St. Louis from Illinois, and the old man, with his first up-close and personal encounter with Mark Twain’s highway, may be saying to himself once again, “The mighty Mississippi.”

He should have seen it when it was flooding.

 

Jim Schwab