I spent a white Christmas in Boise, Idaho.

Make that a late white after Christmas in Boise, Idaho.

In fact, make that a non-white actual Christmas near Cedar Creek Lake in Texas

Alone.

OK, so I had my dog with me. You know what I mean.

I could have been in Winter Wonderland on Christmas Day, but noooo...

The airports weren’t closed. There were no blizzards.

Just mergers.

Want to survive in today’s dismal financial climate, you got to be lean and mean. Sell your grandmother’s grave, if that’s what it takes to get the bottom line in shape.

Every industry I know, including this one, is cutting human bodies from its payrolls.

It’s either that, or go out of business.

Look, I’m not the smartest bulb in the socket, but even I understand the basic facts of business life.

You’ve got to make more than you spend, right?

On the other hand....

Business cliche No. 2: “You’ve got to spend money to make money.”

Unfortunately, spending money cuts down on shareholders profits.

They don’t like that. Ever. And they’ve been eating it a lot lately.

So companies sometimes do stupid things.

You probably read about the Delta Airlines/Northwest merger.

I’ve traveled on Delta a lot. No complaints. Until last Christmas Day.

The “new” lean and mean Delta/Northwest machine, cheated me out of spending Christmas Day with my daughter.

I’m not a even a shareholder with this airline, so I can’t benefit there either.

Like the large number of passengers who were standing in line with me on Christmas Eve at 5 a.m., trying to be there dutifully early for a 7:10 a.m. flight, I was kicking my luggage toward the ticket counter.

Very slowly.

By the time my 7:10 plane left the ground at DFW, I’d moved halfway through the line.

Those who allowed three hours of waiting in line, i.e. getting there at 4 a.m. got to move two-thirds of the way toward the ticket counter while their flights soared at 40,000 feet without them.

Why so long?

Look, I’ve never run an airline. I know they’ve been having problems.

All I wanted to do was spend Christmas Day with my daughter, not solve their economic woes.

But Delta/Northwest muckity mucks, turned their noses in the air and kept telling themselves how “lean and mean” and financially proud they were of themselves.

How mean?

Well, they had eight monitors in front of eight ticket counters from at least 5 a.m. to 7 a.m, when most of us were still waiting in line.

There was one mammal standing in front of one terminal facing the line.

About 7 a.m., a second mammal began standing in front of a second monitor.

Six monitors still sat idle.

Finally, when officials sensed rioting was about to take place, they filled up the counters with six more mammals and moved us through in less than half-an-hour.

See what happens, when human labor does actual WORK!

Why didn’t they do that in the first place? Several muckity mucks walked by from time-to-time, but they didn’t want to get their hands dirty on the keyboard, I guess.

Besides that, they probably didn’t have a clue how to operate the computers. They just count beans.

So here’s why you spend money to make money. BECAUSE MOST OF US WHO STOOD IN LINE FOR NOTHING AFTER SPENDING HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS TO FLY ON YOUR STUPID AIRPLANES, ONLY TO HAVE OUR TRIPS DESTROYED, BECAUSE OF YOUR MEAN-SPIRITED BUSINESS PRACTICES, WILL NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH YOUR AIRLINE AGAIN!!!

AND IF OTHERS HERE ABOUT THIS SIR — AND I’M NOT GOING TO KEEP IT A SECRET —YOU KNOW — WELL THEN, YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED PAL.

What’s wrong with America, you ask? Greedy muckity mucks with their obscene salaries who are too lazy to pitch in and help out.

Let’s give them some tax money to make up for the business they missed by not having any employees on duty on one of the busiest days of year.

That’s pretty much what I intended to tell them, anyway, but first I had to wait in line for the people in front of me to give the airline a piece of their own minds with their own creative thoughts and threats.

In all fairness, the airlines did trot out two muckity-mucks who are apparently paid to feign sincerity and say “I’m sorry,” and “Gosh darn it. I sure hate that. Really, I do. Next.”

In the end, the bad guys made me a deal. I could come back in two days, and take the same flight out.

Or they would give me my money back on a non-refundable ticket.

Right there tells you they knew they’d messed up big time.

I still wanted to see my daughter, and they did agree to extend my visit by one day, meaning I ended up only losing one day of my Christmas vacation.

CHRISTMAS DAY!!!

The employees at this airline, those left, are quite courteous. One was embarrassed, too.

He told a co-worker, when his chance for the buyout came he was going to take it, because: “I can’t come to work everyday like this and be embarrassed.”

I thanked the designated complaint absorber for listening. I knew he wanted to feel bad.

One told me he was retiring in three days.

Aren’t these happy times. Lean and mean corporations who’ve grown so greedy they must now cheat themselves out of business.

No one else is left.

Except, of course, the United States government.

That’s where we come in. In exchange for their greediness, we will probably wind up giving them billions of our tax dollars.

Do airline executives get to fly to D.C. to panhandle for a few billion more of our tax dollars, since it’s their standard mode of travel. Or do they have to ride in cars like the auto muckity mucks, who had to pay penance before having their cups filled.

Not that any of this bothers me in the slightest. I did get to see my daughter over the holidays. I did get to give and open presents belatedly.

And I did get to see the snowy remains of the White Christmas I missed. It was still stuck majestically to the foothills surrounding Boise.

What’s not to love?

CHRISTMAS ALONE IN TEXAS, STUPID!!!