Not Even 11 AM And A Banner Day Already

That was sarcasm.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was going to rant about lousy customer service. The reason for my rant was going to be SprintPCS. I'll spare you the details for now, but just know that once this contract is up in 400 more years I will never ever ever ever do business with them again.

So, back to today.Ed went to the Sprint store yesterday to sort some stuff out. He had to go back today because no one there can get their stories straight. While he was there he ran into one of the other flight instructors from the school at which he teaches.

A little background. Ed has his commercial pilot rating and is a certified flight instructor. But, in order to get a job with an airline he must have 156,784,313,546,121 flight hours. He is a little over half-way there. We were able to come back to NC partly because the school where he is at said that they needed flight instructors badly and that the school is busy and all that jazz.

We packed up all our stuff and promptly left that pit called Daytona. Ed starte working at the flight school. He's worked the desk. He's helped other instructors. He's cleaned the planes. He's instructed and he's been vomitted on twice by inexperienced wannabe pilots. He's given up family time to work the desk so that he can be a "good" employee. In short, he's bent over backwards for this school.

We've had our concerns about the school. The planes are not maintained as well as they should be. The business is very very very slow -- even though they promised it wouldn't be. And on and on.

Anyway... back to today (again). He saw this co-worker at the Sprint store (who coincidentally was having the EXACT SAME problem we've had). His name is Pete. Pete was the chief flight instructor at the school, but Ed took his place. It wasn't one of those things where the new guy came in and stole someone else's job. Pete is planning on moving on soon, so he resigned that position while still remaining a flight instructor.

Pete asked Ed if he had talked to Rob yet. Rob is the owner. Then Pete proceeded to tell Ed that Rob is closing the school in 30 days. The instructors can finish out their students -- at least until the planes wear completely out. Then that's it.

Nice. Real nice.

So Ed has a few options.

#1. He has several applications out with the airlines. He's waiting on them to contact him. When that will be, no one knows.

#2. Ed could volunteer for deployment to the Mexico border or to Iraq. He's not keen on either of those sinc ethat would take him away from us and would not help him gain flight time. If he volunteers to go and then an airline calls, he's stuck and would be unable to take the airline job. They don't wait around. This option would pay the bills though.

#3. He can volunteer to go to Langley AFB with the NG. There is a flight school near there where he could build up flight time in his "off-duty" time. Again though, if he volunteers to go and then an airline calls, he's stuck and would be unable to take the airline job.

#4. He could go back to work at Toyota and give up his dream of ever flying professionally.

Lovely.

Ed is the kind of guy who will do what it takes to provide for his family. I just really don't want him to have to not fly; especially after what we've gone through to get his flight time and all that.

We've been praying, for years it seems, for God to show us what to do and when to do it and where to do it and all that. We are still waiting. Trying to be patient, but it's getting a little tough right now.