Up your game Karen!

Don’t you love it how sports sayings and expressions have made their way into our general conversation. I honestly don’t understand the game of baseball (it wasn’t exactly popular in South Africa) but yes, I use the expression “touch base” with gay abandon. Honestly, I still really don’t know what it means from a baseball point of view.

So what made me think of this? Well as you can imagine the rules for travel at the moment are complex and constantly changing. Every booking we make has to be checked and checked again. We have also had a huge number of phone calls from confused members of the public. They might have a ticket booked to Houston but are not sure what the entry requirements are. They might need to bring their relative over to Canada from India. They may be confused about what will happen when they have to connect to another flight at Amsterdam airport.

What is the common thread here? Well none of these people bought (or intended to buy) their tickets through us. They just need information. Trust me – we are totally understanding of people being confused. The rules do keep changing – constantly – made worse by the fact that each State in the US has their own rules and in the EU restrictions change like the weather. With this in mind I put together a page on my website with handy links to all the airlines and also some government websites so at least we can send something over. http://www.thetravellady.ca/useful-links-for-covid-updates.html Most people are really sweet and probably don’t realise the time it takes to research each individual situation because one size doesn’t fit all.

The prize of the week, however, goes to a lady (and I don’t really know if her name was Karen) who called in as she had a ticket to go down to somewhere in the States and wanted to know what the entry requirements were. When she was told that we did not know offhand but this is something that would have to be investigated she said –

“You need to up your game”

Oh … sorry ma’am. We have failed you in your quest for free information to which you were fully entitled seeing as we are paid by the Government to provide this service. Oh no wait. We are not paid by the Government. Heck, we are not even paid by the airlines.

It’s just as well I have a sense of humour