Imagine going to a restaurant for a 6 p.m. reservation and being told you won’t be seated until 8 p.m. This information is given to you without apology.

And you accept it.

Then imagine being seated at 8 p.m., but not being waited on until 9 p.m. There is an apology with this news, but no offer of a discount of your meal.

And you accept it.

Then you get your bill, already outrageously expensive, and you notice you’re being charged extra for a table with more leg room.

And you accept it.

Then you leave the restaurant three hours later than you planned, meaning you missed the start of the movie you wanted to attend. For this inconvenience, you receive no apology from the restaurant.

And you accept it.

Then imagine next time you’re going out to eat … you make a reservation with the same restaurant and give it your business again.

This would never happen, right? Nobody in their right mind would accept that treatment from a business and continue to patronize it. Nobody would continue to give money to that business model, right?

Right?

Americans do it with airlines every single day.

Comparing a restaurant with an airline is admittedly not the fairest comparison – there are a number of things like weather and unforeseen mechanical problems that American, Delta, United and others have little or no control over – but the meek manner in which we accept the shortcomings of the air travel business is remarkable.

What other business gets away with being so late so often and so unapologetically?

What other business rarely offers sales or discounts, even when it so late so often?

What other business can have people working directly with its customers, often face-to-face, who are so rude and so condescending and yet the customers are forced to grin and bear it?

The answer to those questions – and many others – would be: No other businesses can do any of those things and get away with it.

Yet Americans, because we need (or simply want) to get from Point A to Point B in shortest time possible, continue to buy plane tickets by the thousands every day.

It truly is a head-scratcher. If, say, a store that sold electronics treated its customers like airlines treat their customers, the electronics store would be bankrupt in three months. Meanwhile, airlines continue to roll along.

I get it. Business travelers have little choice if they are in Fargo on Tuesday and need to be in Dallas by Wednesday. They have to fly. So if they’re stuck on a tarmac for two hours waiting to be de-iced, what are they going to do? And if Mike and Michelle from Moorhead have five days of vacation and want to fly from the frozen tundra to tropical beaches, they can’t drive. So the airlines have something of a captive audience.

And if you sit in Chicago’s O’Hare airport and watch the thousands of travelers departing and arriving every minute of every day, you realize air travel is a logistical miracle.

But some of the travel horror stories are remarkable, and they seem to be getting more common.

Take the case of my fellow talk-show host at KFGO, Joel Heitkamp. He was in Kansas City on a business trip for a few days last week. His flight out of Fargo took far longer than expected because Hector International Airport didn’t have de-icing fluid in the truck. It’s November, after all, so how could anybody expect bad weather in November?

The trip back home was worse. Joel wanted to get back earlier than scheduled, so he plunked down some extra money to change his flight from Kansas City to Fargo. He ended up going from Kansas City to Dallas on a 5 a.m. flight. His flight from Dallas to Chicago was delayed because the plane broke down. This caused him to get to Chicago late and reached his connection gate 1 minute late. The airline had already locked the door, so he missed that flight back to Fargo. Joel couldn’t get on another flight until 4 p.m. and didn’t arrive back in Fargo until about 6 p.m.

Just a brutal, frustrating day of travel. And none of the airlines involved offered even a $50 coupon, just to say, “Sorry for the headaches.”

One thing is certain: Next time Joel or anybody else needs to get from Point A to Point B in the shortest amount of time possible, they’ll book a flight.

Chances are, they’ll be delayed and frustrated. Yet we keep coming back for more.

Thank you, sirs, may we have another?

(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO-AM in Fargo-Moorhead. He can be heard 2-5 p.m. weekdays. Follow him on Twitter @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)