Catania, Italy (October 9, 2025)
Have you seen this puffy jacket?
Last seen on FlixBus N528 (5:55am Agrigento to Catania at 8:50am)
After traveling with this jacket for 100 days, I made the honest mistake of leaving it on the bus I took this morning from Agrigento to Catania. In my defense, I got up at 4:30am this morning so that I could check out of our hotel at 5:30am and be on said bus by 5:45am as it left 10 min later.
Is this jacked a prized possession? No. Does it have any special meaning? No. Is it easily replaced? Yes. I plan on doing so tomorrow when I am in Athens in any of the more than 25 shops within a 1.5 mile walking radius that are open and available to me.
So why even bring it up?
I Could Have Easily Got It Back
It’s a waste of a good jacket. I realized my mistake about 5 minutes after I got off the bus. I went directly to the app to see what I could do. I found a FAQ link to a form … that was broken.
No matter, I saw a chatbot. I explained that I lost my jacked, which bus I was on and where in the world I was. An agent would be with me “shortly.”
10 to 15 minutes later, I had a human. Yay! I explained that I found the form and tired to submit a ticket and it was broken. She sent me to the same form.
Okay, but the link didn’t work. Could she try and see for herself? No? Did she have a direct link? Yes. Okay, that helps. Good. This one works. New problem. The booking code I have isn’t recognized. Try again. Nope. WTF? Agent asks if I used a partner? Yes. Sometimes its a different code. Okay. New link. Request new booking code to be sent to my email. Okay. Guess what? It’s the same code. The one that isn’t recognized.
I explain this. Can we try something else? No. Screen share? No. Can she fill out the form and I give her the information? No. Can she explain what happens to lost and found items on the buses in general? No. Can I speak to a supervisor? No. No? Chat session ended with survey link to rate the quality of the interaction. You bet. One star. Would not recommend.
90 minutes in total. Try again. Get a new agent. Request supervisor from the start. Explain the situation. Given email address, “service@flixbus.com” to send details to and chat session terminated. Okay. Message received.
Why Am I Posting This?
I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I’m fascinated. This is what “optimization” leads to. This is where capitalism takes every company when efficiency (i.e. the bottom line) is the primary driver against which all other elements are measured.
When our humanity is lost to squeezing every last ounce of efficiency out of the system, this is what remains. The system is great when it works and a nightmare when something doesn’t work or goes outside of the norm.
I’ve used FlixBus a few times now and never had a problem. And that’s the point. For getting from one place to another efficiently, safely and cheaply, they are GREAT. God help you if you have a problem, though.
I’m old enough to remember when we could make a phone call and talk to a real person who cared enough about the challenge you faced and would help you solve it. If that system exited today, I could have, in about 5 minutes, ascertained the following:
Does FlixBus Catania have a “lost and found”?
If so, where could I go to retrieve my item?
If not, what is the process to have my item shipped to me?
If neither, what happens to said items so I can at least feel good that they find a good home and/or are put to good use.
This has all been directly in alignment with a fabulous book I’ve been reading called What is Progress by Aldo Schiavone — I highly recommend it. It takes a good hard look at the history of the entire human race up until today and what we are facing including the incredible challenges that “progress” has brought to our doorstep.
I’m okay with losing my jacket today. I’m okay with having a 2 hour challenging adventure with customer service. What I’m reflecting on is where we are today as a result of all this progress, convenience and efficiency and where we are headed as a result of all of it.
I’m truly fascinated by what’s upon us today. It’s not artificial intelligence, nor our current political system. It’s actually much bigger than all of that. It’s the full integration of humanity and nature. We’re at an incredible point in our history and as much as we’d like to say there’s never been anything like it, that simply isn’t true and Aldo Schiavone has done a wonderful job of showing the patterns of history that are easy to overlook. At just 113 pages, it’s one of those books I am not only reading slowly, I might just need to read a second time.
Mount Etna (the other giant volcanic mountain of Sicily we drove by)
This is more of a footnote. We drove by Mount Etna and Elena pointed it out from our bus. It’s the other volcanic mountain of Sicily and it’s really beautiful especially at sunrise which is what we were seeing in the distance (even if I didn’t take pictures from far away).
