Jimi's latest post (Flying While Fat) made me think of all the reasons I have come to hate flying. It's not fear of hurtling through the air in a metal tube at 35,000 feet. Nah. It's the people who really don't believe the one-carry-on rule.
(These are probably people who roll into the express line at the grocery store with a cart waaay over the 15-item maximum, blithely ignoring the angry stares of people who are paying for one or two things and thinking—silly folk!—that Express means they'll get out more quickly…)
So they weasel their way aboard, and proceed to take up all the overhead space with their many bags. Then they stuff what's left over under their own seats and, because their legs will no longer fit under their now-filled leg room, stick their feet on either side of their pile. And into your space.
These are also the same people who plant their elbow on the entire arm rest and refuse to move it for the entire flight. (The in-flight version of how dogs mark their territory.)
You don't have to be big to hate being turned into human origami in coach. But being bigger than me (I'm 5'3") doesn't automatically give a body the right to claim some of the paltry space that's allotted each of us.
Here's hoping the airlines that treat paying customers like people and not commodities (and there are a few) force the competition to catch up.
Meanwhile, the multiple bag-schlepper/space-hogger?
Don't be that person.
Karen Grigsby Bates is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for NPR News and co-author, with Karen Elyse Hudson, of The New Basic Black: Home Training For Modern Times (Doubleday)
Got a flying horror story? Share it at AskComeCorrect@gmail.com. We'll share the best ones, unless you ask us not to.
is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for NPR News and co-author, with Karen Elyse Hudson, of The New Basic Black: Home Training For Modern Times (Doubleday).