Southwest Airlines, you are dead to me.

I put Southwest Airlines on notice at Christmas, when they refused to check the plane for my purse in spite of the fact that I knew exactly where it was and that the plane had not yet boarded new passengers. Even though I view this as horrible customer service, I felt that it was, at least in part, my own damn fault for being stupid enough to leave my purse on the plane. Additionally, it is quite a haul for Sarah and Josué to pick us up at O'Hare, so I thought I'd continue using them just for Chicago trips. I almost changed my mind when they charged me to ship my purse home, but I figured I would give them one more chance.

I now have a list of grievances, only a few of which I will go into here.

• If you are going to have the vast majority of gates at a given airport (Midway, I'm looking at you), is it so much to ask that you staff adequate ticketing agents so that the line for check in does not have to wrap around the building?
• If, in your estimation, that is too much to ask (and it appears that it is), please do not use the most bitter old woman you can find to direct customers into line. I have worked in customer service for years and I do understand how trying it can be to deal with angry customers. But, "Find the last person in line and follow them" is not helpful and it makes me want to punch you in the face.
• You have signs directing people into different lines. If passengers traveling with infants should step into a special line, the sign should say so. The lovely woman by the sign knew this information. Why didn't the aforementioned hag direct the dozens of parents not to take up space in the already very congested line when we could instead not be driving other passengers crazy with our cranky children?
• I have not had a flight with you in recent memory in which you were not begging customers to give up their seats because you overbooked the flight. I understand that this is standard practice in the airline industry, but you are apparently very bad at executing it successfully.
• Finally, I checked my baggage more than 90 minutes before my scheduled departure. My suitcase made it to Kansas City. Why is it, then, that Alliclaus' car seat remains in Chicago?

For these reasons and so many more, Southwest Airlines will not be getting any more of my money. Now, who knows where I can get a reasonably priced ticket from Kansas City to Phoenix?

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Incidentally, pictures of Alliclaus' San Diego photo shoot with Heather can be found here. I don't know how long the link will be good and it does take awhile to load (minutes, not seconds), so be warned.