The Homeless Lady At The Airport.

This is supposed to be a true story. It happened a few years ago.

My department has a fairly nice lounge set aside for our use. The lounge used to be an ultra-premium club for the best customers of an airline that happens to have its Latin American and Caribbean hub where I work. The lounge was only open to first class passengers who were also platinum Plus frequent fliers - often paying thousands of dollars for their seat. Invitation only here!

Anyway, the airline could not keep up the payments for the space. After 9-11 there simply were not enough people paying $5,000 or more for an airline ticket. So the department I work for took the place over once the airline split.

Now the space is still very nice. You get a great view of the ramp - one of the best views of the ramp operation in the airport. It is only opened up by special request, and then only for people fairly far up the food chain.

Anyway, the cleaning people were doing their thing in the lounge one day. After they finished the cleaning crew left the door unlocked. Not really a big deal, the place is tucked out of the way and not exactly out in the open.

In spite of this, a homeless person that decided to hang out in the airport found the open lounge. The lounge has a kitchen, bathrooms, showers, sofas, a nice glass table, a great view, and even a TV. Pretty nice digs.

Needless to say, the homeless lady decided that it was a nice rent free apartment. So she just hung out there. During the day she would go out in the main terminal and panhandle or collect luggage carts then sell them to people for a buck (it usually costs three bucks to rent a cart) and so on. When it was time to chill, she would go "home" to the lounge and watch TV or whatever. She probably drank up all the non-perishable items kept in the club (sodas and bottled mineral water and whatnot).

It took almost a week before anyone noticed. The police knew about the lady that would pop in the terminal daily, thinking she was simply using the public bus to get in and out. She never caused a security concern because she never tried to access restricted areas - she would remain in the public area. As long as she was not pestering passengers too bad, they sort of let her be. Homeless people have to go somewhere after all, and if I were homeless a big air conditioned building where I would not have to worry about street violence would seem to be a good place to go.

Word is that there was one thing in the lounge that she did not use - the showers.