Airport rogues

I brought three birds to the airport with me to take back to New York. The last time I came back from Florida, some rogue airport workers charged me twenty-seven dollars for carrying a bird, but this time I didn't have to pay anything. Savyasachi put the birds in a box, and I kept the box with my hand luggage.

I was originally supposed to leave from Fort Lauderdale, but I was returning from Miami instead. The lady at the ticket counter asked her supervisor if there was any difference in the price of my ticket. The supervisor looked at my ticket and said, "Six dollars," very quickly. If I were supposed to pay extra, they would have told me. Since they did not ask me to stand in line and pay, that meant that they were supposed to give me back six dollars as a refund. But instead of giving me my refund, the lady said, "You don't have to stand here," and she told me to stand in another line at the boarding gate, beyond the place where they check your bags. I didn't have the heart to fight with them. They would have kept me for twenty minutes just for six dollars!

These two were not losing or gaining anything by not giving me the money. But who wanted to stand there and argue with them? The last time I flew back from Florida, the airline workers charged me twenty-seven dollars for the bird I was carrying, and then they put the money in their own pockets. The man from whom I bought the birds told me that he takes birds quite often on airplanes and never pays anything. He said that the men who charged me twenty-seven dollars last time at the airport had cheated me. But this time these people were not even gaining anything.