Air travel annoyances, part 1
Not the most original topic, but who doesn’t like complaining about air travel?
In no particular order…
I HATE… when people stand side-by-side on the moving walkways in airports. Hell I hate it when they stand, even if they’re not blocking me. Just them standing there as I walk past annoys me. They’re moving walkways not moving standways. Their point is not to spare able-bodied people the grueling task of putting one foot in front of the other, it’s to allow you to get to where you’re going faster. I’ll typically just walk right up behind someone and say “excuse me”. Or if there’s too many of them and moving out of my way would obviously require a level of coordination that they don’t possess, I’ll walk up as far as I can and have this annoyed look on my face… just so they know that they’re inconveniencing me. I especially love it when I walk past someone on the moving walkway and they give me a look like “what’s that guy in a rush for?” I’m usually not in a rush, I just don’t see the point in standing while the floor moves me at a rate slower than what I could walk at.
I HATE… when people crowd right up against the baggage claim. Let me describe a system that would work remarkably well, and you will never see it happen. The baggage comes out on the conveyer. People stand back at a reasonable distance and watch for a bag that looks like theirs. When they see one, they move forward and check if it’s theirs. If so, they retrieve it. If not, they back up and keep watching. This works because everyone can see the bags. They can also leisurely converse with their traveling companions or people meeting them at the airport. I know, that sounds obvious doesn’t it?
But every time, and I mean EVERY time, people will instead crowd right up to the baggage claim like starving Third World villagers to a UN aid truck. You’ll even have people that are friends of the travelers crowd up to it even though they don’t have any bags. They just want to partake in the excitement I guess. Or maybe they think Santa is working the baggage claim that day giving out suitcases with big red bows on them. I’d like to think that a good half of the people realize the stupidity of it, but since enough people do it that way, they have to follow suit or else get blocked out. Those that get blocked out have to try to spot their luggage by looking between people or over their shoulders, and then push through them to get their luggage when they see it.
Complicating this even further is that as you’re watching for your luggage, passengers from other flights are arriving and immediately pushing forward to find their bags, ignorant of the fact that obviously the luggage that is on the conveyer belt is from flights that got in before yours. Look around you. All these people you see getting their luggage, do you recognize any of them from your flight? Don’t tell me you waited to board your plane, boarded the plane, flew to your destination, got off the plane, and didn’t at any point take notice of any people around you. Are you really that oblivious to the world around you? Don’t answer that because it would depress me.
I HATE… when there’s blindingly bright sunlight shining in through the window and the person in the window seat doesn’t close the shade. They don’t notice that I’m getting blasted full-force like that guy in Sunshine?! Too obscure of a reference? I liked the movie. Cool visuals, great music… then again I saw it on the big screen and don’t know if it would translate well to the small screen. I don’t want to overhype it, but I got totally immersed in that movie. I bet more people are checking it out now that Danny Boyle won best director for Slumdog Millionaire. Speaking of Danny Boyle, 28 Days Later was sooo freaky. Just thinking about that movie makes me feel a little bit uneasy. I don’t mean to knock the traditional zombie, because that has its appeal, but the super-fast zombie was definitely an improvement on the genre in my opinion. Hold on, what was I talking about? Something about planes. Hey wouldn’t Zombies on a Plane make a great sequel to Snakes on a Plane? Maybe not, there’s only so many ways a zombie can jump out at you on a plane. Unless they were zombie snakes but then would you really be able to tell the difference between normal snakes and zombie snakes? No, that’s just silly, it’d be the same movie they already did. Well except that they’re going for your brains. Well no matter, if anyone makes Zombie Snakes on a Plane, I WILL sue because I came up with the idea here. OK now I totally lost my train of thought. Oh sunlight. Yeah it like.. sucks. Or something. Moving on…
I HATE… when baggage handlers mess with you. This section Mom & Dad may want to skip over. Once I opened my suitcase after arriving at my destination to discover the condoms that I had packed at the bottom of the suitcase lying right on top. It’s not like I was trying to hide them, but just something I tend to be discrete about. But some wiseass baggage handler had opened my suitcase, found them, and decided to put them on top.
Another time, I had done the perfect packing job. I mean I was really truly proud of myself. I used every bit of space effectively. When I got to my destination, I discovered my suitcase had been ransacked. I mean this wasn’t just someone being messy, this was deliberate. There’s no way anyone could have carelessly made it this chaotic. It would have required effort. When I packed my shoes, I put them in plastic bags so I wouldn’t get the rest of my clothes dirty, especially considering I had polished them the night before. I had shoe trees in my shoes to keep their shape. The shoes had been removed from the bags, the shoe trees had been removed from the shoes, the shoes had been shoved back in all crumpled up. My socks were unrolled, my dress shirts had been shoved in there willy-nilly, my condom wrappers had been ripped open (just kidding about that one). I was furious, but nothing you can really do. You can report damaged luggage but there was no real damage. Shoe polish didn’t even get on my clothes. So everything was okay, but I was mad nonetheless. I wanted an option on the form to report “baggage handlers f***ed with me”. (Sorry for the language Mom & Dad, I told you not to read this.)
Perhaps they were looking for something to steal and didn’t find anything. I almost would prefer that because there would be a reason for it. I still think it was just some unhappy worker getting his kicks on some guy that dared to pack a 49.5 pound suitcase. Yeah it was just under the limit - like I said, expert packing job!
That’s it for now, although I’ve got a list going so I’m sure I’ll revisit this. I’ll go ahead and append a “part 1″ to the title.