A musing Beam

Long time without a post -- been a busy several months. I'll start posting a few ideas I've had in the hopper.  This one is a request from a friend who had a bad travel experience.  It's a case study in problem solving skills, incentives, and thinking of people as human beings. As a consumer of the airline industry's products, it certainly feels like their customer-facing employees rarely have any incentive or desire to be helpful, efficient, or even to solve a problem.  Everyone is annoyed with the passengers when a flight is cancelled.  How was that their fault? The annoyance is even worse if the first airline transfers you to another airline. A woman stands in a long line, sobbing, because she won't make it to her daughter's wedding.  She is mad at the person at the desk, who of course didn't make the decisions leading to the flight cancellation.  Neither side shows empathy.  Passengers who don't fly often are in a strange, emotionally charged w