Playing Tag

Baggage tags are very important regardless of your mode of transportation. They increase the risk that your bag ends up in the same place as you. We put our baggage tags on in the Seaside Bistro parking lot. They were just paper tags that we printed on our own printer before we left home. They had to be folded and taped. I folded them all carefully as shown in the diagram. I did my bag first. I overlapped the ends, forming it into a circle. I used several pieces of tape to secure it. In the meantime, Mark was working on his bag. Instead of overlapping the ends, he put them together the way you would place fabric if you wanted to sew a seam. I had no idea about the quantity of tape he was using. It didn't seem like a good idea to question him about it. Experience has taught me not to question how a man is completing a task unless lives are at stake. There was no rule about how to tape the tag to the bag. And my assumption is that there is never one and only one right way to do anything. Besides, he was so much faster at it than I was that he had his bag and the bag with our toiletries completed in the same amount of time it took me to do my bag. Ready to go, we set off for the dock and turned our bags over to one of the porters.

The first thing we did when we got on board was take our carry-on bag to our stateroom. Our checked bags hadn't been delivered yet, but that's not at all unusual. After we set sail, I went back and checked to see if the bags had been delivered yet. My bag was there, but Mark's bag and the bag with the toiletries were not. Interestingly, they were all together when the porter took them. I found it a bit odd that they'd been separated.

I went back to the stateroom around 7 PM to check again. The toiletries bag had been delivered. It was now sporting a sticky tag instead of the tag Mark had put on it. But Mark's bag was still missing. I stopped by the guest services desk and they told me that all the bags had not yet been delivered and to let them know if the missing bag hadn't been delivered by 9 PM. No problem. We went to dinner and returned to the room after 9. Still no bag. We ran into our steward in the hallway and he escorted us to the places where we could look at undelivered bags. Ours wasn't there. Now they started questioning us about the contents of the bag. Did we have bottles of liquid? No. Did we have an iron? No. Mark went to bed and I went back to guest services where we repeated the question exercise. They told me to come back at 11 PM. Wait a minute. I had no intention of coming back every hour to be told the same thing. I was convinced they had delivered the bag to the wrong Elliott. They assured me that if that happened the wrong Elliott would certainly call and let them know they had a bag that didn't belong to them. But when would they do that? It was nearly 10 PM. Then the young lady mentioned the possibility that the bag had been left at the dock and if that were the case, it would be delivered to us Tuesday in Cozumel. I asked what Mark was to do in the meantime. I was told he would have the use of a tuxedo and that he would get free laundry service until his bag was delivered. What was he supposed to do while they did his laundry? Wear the tuxedo all day? Wrap up in a towel? Wear my clothes? We decided to worry about what to do after 11 PM. I gave her a description of the bag - black with a lime green tag.

I understand how airlines lose bags. Everyone coming through checking a bag is going someplace different. But how does a cruise line do it? Everyone on that dock is getting on the same boat. I found it amazing!

Then at 10:50 I got the call. The bag had been found. WooHoo! Mark had clothes! (You'll note that he slept through my efforts to track down his bag.) I went down to guest services to collect the bag. It had the lime green tag but the tag that Mark had taped on was missing.

Now, I'm perfectly happy to blame the cruise line for losing the bag. Just like I blame the post office for lost mail. But I did notice that the bag that I tagged was delivered on time with the tag still on it and the toiletries bag was delivered late with a replacement tag on it, and Mark's bag was brought up to guest services because it had no tag on it and they had no idea who it belonged to. Is it possible that some of the baggage tags weren't actually secure? Is it possible that there is NOT more than one right way to tape a tag? We'll never know because the next time, we'll carry our bags on board.