Get rid of Handlex and AirTransAT

I thought I caught a break last week when AirTransat gave me a call and asked me to go work for them as a bordind agent. I was kind of thrilled and excited to get to work at the airport and see how the big wheels of traveling works.

As it turns out, I got the biggest insult of 2006. The training is a period of 3 days, the third day being rivision and examination day. I can't go into details as to how the third day goes, because I quit before that.

You see, working at the airport requires a lot more then common sense and a good attitude towards clients, it requires a big effort and a lot of know-how. The airport language is complicated and long to remember. It's something you've got to want to do, or else it won't work. So I came into my course, fully expecting this challenge and happily learning all that needed to be learnt and as it turns out, the only thing that was ever tested was my patience.

The first day consisted of a disgusting tour of the head offices in cote-vertu and a horrendus, not to mention useless, tour of the airport. The 'teacher' actually had organized nothing and the whole day turned into a waiting game. We were led around and had to wait so that the teacher could disturb the 'hard working' employees to see if it was ok for us to enter their domain. At the end of the day, I had no better clue of what my job would have consisted of. And that means I only had 1 day to remember everything from the language and the weights required and authorized for luggage.

They opened for business in YVR (Vancouver airport) so the staff was quite low. For a company that required over 50 employees ASAP, very little were present on the day of the training and very little were interested in meeting, seeing and teaching the potential new employees.

The second day was followed by an actual in-class-learning day. Except the teacher didn't prepare, so she passed out papers in random fashion, and had a powerpoint presentation she had never seen before to work with. She simply read, and then got bored so she made the students read. She showed no interest in teaching us anything, she would even text message on her cellphone while students asked her questions. She would get up and go outside while people talked because the people she was messaging were there.

I've got to hand it to those people, they sure know how to make a business run. She spent a serious amount of time telling us who to blame is things wen't awry. She made the company sound like a scapegoat hunt and actually had the nerve to say that blaming the passenger was a good course of action.

Sure glad I won't work for such a comapany.