"Guy Elden Jr." wrote in message ...

The approach for us was silky smooth... excellent controllers working there.
Once we got handed off to Dulles tower, all hell practically broke loose.
The guy working approaches and departures that day clearly did not know how
to handle us... we were on final for 01L when we got an instruction to make
left base for 30.

What's abrupt? The runways are about at right angles to each other at
their respective approach ends. Crikes it's 4500 feet to the first turnoff.
You just continue up to 30 and then turn left and land. What they
probably wanted was to depart guys on 1L rather than making them
wait for you.

After dropping off my wife and getting a complimentary ride over to the
Subway sandwich shop on the field, we got back in the plane and prepared to
depart enroute back home to CDW. Ground again had the same lady working the
freq, but we got a bit turned around... we passed the taxiway she wanted us
to hold short on (short of 01L),

You seem to need to work on your naviagation skills at large airports.

so she just had us continue on south to the
next one (A4 or something like that).

A4 isn't anywhere near the runways. Yankee, Kilo, and Quebec are
the stubs. Suggest you study a taxiway chart and have it out nextime.

The reply we got was
nothing short of the most unprofessional, arrogant, a**holeish, and
downright insulting rant

There is no excuse for the rant. But he is right. They were doing you
a favor. Five minutes is not a excessive wait during a push.

Needless to say, I will _never_ fly into IAD without at least another
trained set of eyes with me in the plane. That one controller clearly does
not belong up in the big leagues, with his attitude and inability to handle
us on the arrival.

I have my severe doubts whether you belong at big airports either. I used to
be based at Dulles and I've never had the magnitude of problems you've had.