Thanksgiving Arrival Time Estimation Agency Fines Family for ETA Fraud

The Thanksgiving Arrival Time Estimation Agency issued a $150 fine Tuesday for “ETA fraud,” penalizing the Henderson family after investigators determined their stated arrival time of “around 3” was, in fact, 6:47 p.m.

“‘Around 3’ has a legal definition,” said Agency Director Tom Rivas, 47, consulting the agency’s Official ETA Codebook, a 90-page volume that classifies arrival estimates into six tiers of precision. “‘Around 3’ means 2:45 to 3:15. ‘Three-ish’ means 3:00 to 3:45. ‘We’re close’ means you have crossed the county line. The Hendersons said ‘around 3’ at 1 p.m., then stopped for pie, then stopped for gas, then stopped ‘just to stretch,’ arriving at 6:47. That is not ‘around 3.’ That is evening.”

The agency, formed to combat what Rivas calls “the epidemic of aspirational arrival times,” uses GPS data, pie-stop receipts, and “a proprietary algorithm that accounts for the universal law that every family stops at least twice more than planned” to verify stated ETAs. Families whose actual arrival deviates by more than 90 minutes from their estimate are fined $50 per hour of discrepancy, “because grandma kept the turkey warm for four hours, and the turkey is the victim here.”

The Hendersons plan to contest the fine. “We said ‘around 3’ and we meant it at the time,” said family spokesperson Greg Henderson, 40. “We didn’t plan the pie stop. The Pie Corridor signs — have you seen them? They’re very persuasive. ‘Next 12 miles.’ We were weak. The corridor was strong.”

The agency was unmoved but offered a settlement: the Hendersons may reduce the fine to $75 by attending the agency’s “Honest ETA Workshop,” a two-hour course teaching families to say “we’ll get there when we get there” — the only estimate the agency classifies as “legally bulletproof.”

Holiday travelers are advised to consult the agency’s online ETA Calculator before departing, which factors in distance, traffic, children, pie corridors, and what Rivas calls “the lie you tell yourself about not stopping.” The calculator’s most common output, he noted, is “add two hours to whatever you’re thinking.”

“We’re not the bad guys,” Rivas said. “The turkey is the bad guy’s victim. We’re just the people who do the math nobody wants to do.”