White-Girl Walkabout, Part Three: “You Would Like to Test Yourself? I’d Like to Help” ~The Universe

In the book The Tools (made famous by the Netflix special, and with references in the Apple+ series Shrinking), Phil Stutz discusses a technique in which one envisions one’s fear as a black cloud.  Stutz encourages his readers to silently scream in their minds “I love pain!  Pain sets me free!” as they run headfirst at the cloud.  This technique had worked for me in the past, especially when it came to entering cold water with my full body.  I had learned that running headfirst into my fears could yield vast mental health “profits”. 

Little did I know, as I made these contracts with myself, that the Universe was listening in, eager to “help.”  The first couple days of my six-day trip were riddled with stress and anxiety, as one “Are you kidding me?!?” experience after another unfolded.  Each of the following unplanned tests presented me with intense challenges of real-time stress management.

(Warning: This next bit is loaded with snark, negativity, and frustration. If you would like to skip ahead and just read about the tools that helped me get through it all, that’s in the next blog.)

AirBnB: Conned by an AI Impersonating a Human

Yes, that’s right.  AirBnB has been infiltrated by bots with “verified” human profiles, renting out “villas” that are, in actuality, cheap motels riddled with health hazards.  Initially, I needed to adjust my trip by one day, so I reached out to my AirBnB host. As a “host”, Jan Solner (who has an impressive seven pages of AirBnB listings according to a google search), was eager to be of service, but claimed she was “unauthorized” to make changes to the reservation. I was invited to contact AirBnB Support on the matter who, unsurprisingly, could not authorize any kind of refund without the approval of the host.  But more on AirBnB in a moment...

Airports:  In Which We See Capitalism Is Alive and Well, While Making Actual Humans Sick…

Have you ever been told, before boarding your flight, that “The cabin is full, and we will be checking your bag”?  You aren’t given a choice, and there is no sense protesting or saying “But you said this on the last flight, and half the overhead compartments were empty!”  You ARE, in fact, being lied to, and this article explains why airlines are freely sacrificing customer service in favor of squeezing dollars out of every second. 

Such was my experience which, when paired with delays in initial flights, and having to wait outside of the aircraft for said-forced-checked bags, resulted in multiple full-on sprints across multiple terminals to arrive to my next flight with five minutes to spare.  The woman sitting next to me on the plane had been literally vibrating with anxiety, shaking in place, worrying that she wouldn’t be able to make her next flight.

Continuing with my practice of taking deep breaths, as I brought my body’s stress response back down to a healthy level, I tried to keep in mind that I was one of the “lucky ones” who was actually granted a seat on the plane that I had paid for, given that airlines are also allowed to sell the same seat on a plane twice. It’s little wonder that today’s airport experience is having very big effects on people’s mental health and it’s only getting worse.

Motel 6: Affordable Rents, with Long-Term Health Hazards at No Extra Cost

Travel-weary and ready to recuperate, I wasn’t expecting much from the Motel 6 that bot-host Jan Solner had booked me in.  It was a decent size for the rate, and sure, it smelled funny, but hey, it’s a roadside motel, and I knew not to expect the Ritz.  Unfortunately, as I later realized, the “funny smell” was industrial-strength cleaning solvent (used to erase god-knows-what-unholy-acts committed by the previous guest).  I came to realize this when I began to experience strange cognitive effects- I was dizzy, disoriented, stumbling, and felt like I had unwittingly ingested some kind of mind-altering drug which, ironically, is the truth of what had happened.  Cleaning solvents are neurotoxic, and most of us know not to sit around breathing bleach-like chemicals for 12 hours on end.  Unfortunately, lack of consciousness due to sleep interrupts such common-sense.

Thankfully, the Motel staff was very apologetic and quickly moved me to a new room.  But after spotting two bedbugs in the new room, I was done, my limits sufficiently exceeded.  I tossed my belongings out on the sidewalk as fast as I possibly could, and began scrutinizing every crack, crevice and crease of each item before tossing it into my suitcase and loading up my rental car.  I was offered a second change of room and an upgrade by motel staff, but politely declined.  “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t expect the bedbugs to come out to greet me if they are there.” 

I drove to a nearby Holiday Inn Express and indulged in the upgraded accommodations, feeling I absolutely earned it.  The final challenge before I could really relax was now to seek a refund from AirBnB.

AirBnB Again: Customer Service That Is Just….Not.

Where to begin on the fiasco that is AirBnB Support… let’s just go through the list:

1)      “Please provide us with additional photos of the bedbugs.”  Well sure, I responded, if you can invite the OTHER bedbugs out for a photo shoot, I’ll be happy to take more pictures.  Problem is, bedbugs are notoriously sneaky and prefer to hide in dark little crevices, so any others around are probably hiding in terror since I murdered their two friends here.

2)      “Those don’t look like bedbugs.”  Well, funny things-I-just-learned!  1) Bedbugs are FAST.  IF you can catch one, you certainly don’t give it a trial.  You crush it to death. And 2) Bedbugs are squishy.  Less like ticks, more like mosquitos.  So when you squish them, what you get is a little black smudge where the parasite USED to be.  For f*ck’s sake, even the Motel 6 manager AND the AI bot-host hadn’t argued with me on this fact!

3)      “It is the host that needs to process the refund.  Let us try to contact the host.”  Surprising no one, AirBnB could not contact the AI host, and would never bother to call back to update me.  This resulted in me opening new tickets.

4)      “I see you have another open case thread with us.  To avoid confusion, we’ll close this thread and support you on the other.”  Except that the ticket they had open was from the beginning of the trip, where I simply wanted to adjust the length of my stay.  EVERY TIME I opened a ticket to discuss the fact that I had left the property entirely, a member of AirBnB’s conscientious staff would close it.  Even while promising “We would never close a ticket that had not been fully resolved.  There are consequences if we were to do that.”

5)      “Please send us another picture of the bedbugs.  We cannot see old tickets that we have closed.”  I’m sorry, what??  You can’t see your own tickets that you repeatedly closed without resolving the issue??  As a friend in tech support remarked “What kind of inane f*ckery is this?  Every ticketing system I have ever used in my career always archives closed tickets.  Tickets get closed accidentally, or the issue isn’t resolved, or the issue reappears, or the business wants to use the closed tickets for training purposes.”  Apparently AirBnB Support is just “special”.  And not in a good way.

By now, after nearly two days of stressful events, I was sobbing…begging for someone at AirBnB to help… But I was beat, and there was no help to be had.  Exasperated, I told the next person that called from AirBnB that I would just be providing my proof and refuting the charges on my credit card.  “Oh, please!  Just give us a moment to help you!”  Forget it, AirBnB.  Enjoy the chargeback fees from my credit card.  They in no way balance out the unnecessary stress you have caused me.

Without the tools I have learned in therapy (which I reinforce by teaching to my clients), any one of the above stressors could have set off a domino effect of catastrophe.  Luckily, I’ve become pretty strong- not immune to stress, but so much better at navigating it.  Read on in the next entry to see how I did it.