I guess I spoke too soon. After five delay notifications and my flight getting pushed back to 8:30 from an original departure time of 3:50, AA officially cancelled the flight, stating that they did not have a complete flight crew and could not take this plane to Charlotte.

I immediately called the AA Executive Platinum desk. They said the earliest they could get me to Denver was 9pm tomorrow night. I would be missing an entire day (that’s 50 percent) of our entire program. I chatted with my manager, who suggested that I still come if I could fully participate in the sessions all day Thursday. Given our company’s getting acquired, this will be my company’s very last annual kickoff. If this weren’t the case, I might have seriously considered just going back to New York. But I wanted to be there for this, even half time, and I wanted to see my colleagues and attend Thursday night’s party. So I booked the flight tomorrow night. And as per usual because American Airlines’ service is just getting worse and worse, the phone agent told me the reason for the cancellation was “weather,” and so unless a gate agent gave me a hotel voucher, they could not give me a hotel voucher. It’s always fun when AA lies on paper about the real reasons for a flight cancellation, but then gives blazingly loud announcements at the gate that it’s due to lack of flight crew. I saw the line at each of the gates — it was over two dozen people long, and there was no way I was getting in one of those lines. My company can deal with my hotel. So, I got my corporate booking app to book me an airport hotel that I could stay at until tomorrow early evening.

I got a Lyft at Charlotte to the airport hotel. After already being infuriated by this whole debacle, I immediately got even more annoyed when I realized no car had a front license plate. People can talk all they want about states like New York and California being nanny states, but you know what? FRONT AND BACK LICENSE PLATES MAKE SENSE AND ARE LOGICAL. North Carolina is clearly backwards here. When you see a sea of black and grey vehicles, and your Lyft is a grey sedan, how the hell are you supposed to tell them apart? Do you want me to go behind the vehicle and check — that is so inefficient and insane.

So I found my car and went behind him to check his license plate. I got into the car, and I said to the driver as soon as I sat down, “Do you know how ridiculous it is that your state doesn’t require front license plates? How am I supposed to know it’s you in a massive sea of grey and black vehicles?”

He responds, laughing, “Oh, I LOVE that North Carolina doesn’t require a front license plate! It’s not necessary. You found me, didn’t you?”

There went his rating. And that was an automatic “no-tip.” I don’t care if it sounds ruthless. I just told him that I found it difficult to find him, and he basically said to me in his own words, with zero empathy, “I’m so happy it was hard for you to find me!”

And it only got worse. When i got to the hotel, the line was over two dozen people long. Only one person was at the desk. The line eventually grew to over 50 people. And after almost thirty minutes of waiting, another hotel employee miraculously showed up to split the line in two. I think all of the people servicing me tonight were competing to see who could be the absolute worst.

I’m not sure how worse this night could have been. Why does our annual kickoff almost always have to be in Denver, and in JANUARY? Would it never make logical sense to make it in San Francisco, our actual company headquarters where the weather is always mild and temperate….?!