JetBlue Blues
Yesterday I flew 6+ hours to California. It was an unremarkable trip, punctuated only by the 5 hours of “Project Runway” that filled our time, and the rude/idiotic people we encountered.
The idiocy began early, when we were waiting for our row number to be called to board at the airport. The previous section had already finished boarding, but the JetBlue staff hadn’t yet called the next section to board, so no one was in line when a young woman, her husband, and their baby moved toward the gate attendants.
I assumed that they were just going to board, since families with young children were among those who were allowed to board early. So I wasn’t surprised when the woman asked an attendant, “Did you already call pre-boarding?” The attendant answered yes.
What surprised me was that she said “Oh,” in a very disappointed voice, and then TURNED AROUND AND SAT DOWN with her husband and baby to wait for their row to be called. Hello? If you’re allowed to pre-board…you can probably just board whenever you want, if you’ve missed pre-boarding.
Once we were on the plane, I soon realized there was a problem with the air nozzles. On one trip recently, the reading lamps over my seats were broken on both legs of the flight, so I was used to having problems. There are certain things I know about myself–one is that when I make a restaurant reservation, they will lose it. Another is that if there is a problem with a seat on a plane, it will be my seat.
Cold air was blowing on me, but when I reached up to adjust my air nozzle, I realized it was shut and that no air was coming out above me. I looked around, and noticed that the air nozzle directly behind my seat was opened at full throttle and aimed directly at me, away from the seat occupant.
I nudged Chris. “Look at that,” I said quietly, and pointed.
Chris looked, and then rolled his eyes. “What a stupid thing to do,” he said. “Those shouldn’t even be allowed to move so much in that direction.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to do, but I was freezing. Normally I don’t like to bother people, but there was no way I could take 6 hours of this. I turned to face the occupants behind me and said politely, “Excuse me.”
The three women behind us turned toward me. All of them were of the age that demanded you call them women, but involved so much gossiping and giggling that you couldn’t help but think of them as girls. All three of them also clearly were traveling together, as they’d been busy in conversation when I interrupted. When I asked them to aim the air nozzle above the middle girl away from the back of my head, they seemed annoyed. But they did it, and one of them mumbled, “Oh, sorry.”
Then I turned back to my seat and noticed that cold air was still blowing on me. I looked behind me, and now I saw that the window seat in the row behind also had the air nozzle pointed directly at my chair.
“Chris, there’s another one still pointed at me,” I said. “Should I say something again?”
Chris turned around and interrupted them. “Excuse me,” he said firmly. “Could you also move that one? It’s still pointed at my wife.”
This time the girls didn’t even bother with a response, and gave us a look that said they thought we were being annoyances. But they moved the air nozzle, and that was all I cared about.
On my other side was one of those very skinny twentysomething females who take up a lot more room than their bodies require. You know the kind; the ones who cross one leg over the other, and have the 4 inch heel of their fashionable boot taking up half of your legroom space. The kind who put their elbows on both armrests, and eat fatty fried foods from bags that mysteriously end up underneath your chair.
I tried to make myself as fat as possible, so that she wouldn’t slowly take over my space if I let my guard down, and eventually I was able to claim half of an armrest back.
The three girls behind me were discussing one girl’s boyfriend. I was intent on watching an Animal Planet show, and didn’t realize what was going on until Chris muttered to me, “I just want to turn around and say, ‘He’s just not that into you.’”
I was willing to pay him money if he’d actually done this, but since our flight had just started, he was against this idea.
As the flight went on, the skinny girl beside me cracked open a salad and ate it. And when I say salad, I don’t mean the kind that comes with a hard-boiled egg, bacon, and vats of dressing. I mean the kind that involves 2 sheets of lettuce and a whole lot of raw baby carrots.
The girl also turned down the flight attendent’s multiple offers of snacks and beverages. Now, I usually like to bring a fruit or a snack of my own because planes never give me enough food, and sometimes what food they offer can be pretty unhealthy. But we had Terra blue potato chips (lower fat than regular chips), and cheese and crackers where you could spread as much or as little “Havarti-type processed cheese product” as you wanted on your cracker. So the snacks, such as they were, were not particularly unhealthy, and given how difficult it’s been for me to find Terra Blues in the local supermarkets, I was a bit perturbed that she was unwilling to eat them. Not to mention that I am my father’s daughter, and was definitely disturbed that she had turned down something FREE.
Around the third or fourth episode of Project Runaway, the woman sitting in front of Chris stretched her arms out and then rested them behind her chair–and directly in front of Chris’s TV screen.
Chris made a, “What the –” gesture at the hands, and I whispered, “Tap her!! I think she forgot about the screen.”
Apparently the hours of Project Runway had lulled Chris into a less aggressive temperament, and he just shrugged and stared at the screen disappointedly.
I reached up and tapped the woman on her shoulder. As she turned around, I started to say, “Your hands…” and gestured.
She immediately put her arms down. “Oh, I’m sorry!!” she said.
It was obvious she was genuinely sorry, and it was also kind of funny how she’d forgotten about the TV screens even though she was also watching Project Runway. She turned around and mouthed, “I’m so sorry!” again at us.
I felt that she could teach a lesson or two about manners to the girls sitting behind us, but I wasn’t quite sure how to bring that up with her, so I let it drop. But maybe one day, when I got old enough to have the confidence to not care what people thought of me, I would encounter something like this. And once I’d listened to enough of their conversation, I would lean back and, without any remorse, yell, “He’s just not that into you!”
Posted by: Supersonic Jane | February 2, 2006 | 7:39 pm
Posted in: This Life