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Is your dad stupid? If not I don't think he had trouble fathoming that nobody dreamed they'd grow up to move luggage around or job specificity, I would bet he couldn't fathom why people put up with it. You know, assuming he wasn't just venting his frustration at spending a quarter of a day sitting around doing nothing with absolutely no chance of recompense.
He probably knows that these systems are heavily specialised to both minimise the number of skilled labourers and so nobody can be held responsible and everyone can pass the buck, increasing the effort required to complain and thus limiting the number of complaints received. He probably thinks it wasn't his dream to lay bricks or bag groceries or serve burgers either when he was younger, but he did it properly anyway because it was his fucking job.
He probably thinks it being cheaper not to prepare for snow is a mind blowingly idiotic excuse for all the employees in a major transportation hub to pretend they've never seen snow and they don't know how to react to it. He probably suspects that their wide eyed bewilderment at this mysterious frozen substance is part of the same problem as the lack of accountability and laziness - we always get the minimum amount of customer service we are on average willing to tolerate, and people with no self respect will tolerate anything.
He might even think that anyone who considers those justifications legitimate is part of the problem, giving the airport workers a pass because they hope others give them a pass for doing a bad job.
An alternative explanation is that he might just have checked out mentally. My father has done that on all except a few subject matters. It's not that he can't understand, it's just that he can't be bothered and therefore choose to believe what is comfortable to him unless significantly pressed.
I feel like a lot of retired or older people do this, and those who don't often seem miserable.
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