Thursday, October 13, 2005

From an A to C

Wow that happened so quickly I didn’t know what was happening.

I’m flying Southwest, and if you’ve ever flown them before you’re probably intimately familiar with their “open seating plan”

If you’re not, basically instead of assigning you a seat like 23A you get a boarding Letter either A, B or C and when you get on the plane you can sit ANYWHERE you want.

I was supposed to fly out at 7:50 pm this evening so when I checked in my boarding pass said I was a lucky recipient of the Letter A. But I wanted to get home earlier so I actually got onto an earlier flight (almost 3 hours earlier) and suddenly became a Letter C.

The Gate Agent just came on and said that there are 127 people on the flight and there are 137 seats on the airplane. Which means that people are going to have to sit next to each other.

I always find it interesting when people are confronted with either sitting next to someone or having a seat between them, they will always choose that extra space and when they’re forced to move, oh do they grouse.

Think about the Movies, how many times have you gone late to a movie and there’s 4 of you and you can’t sit together because everyone is spread out. Or how about in an open seating cafeteria (well I can understand that I really don’t wanna eat with someone I don’t know, what if they eat with their mouth open, ick gross).

Or my all time favorite (ladies you might not get this) you walk into a restroom and there are 4 urinals (let’s call them A, B, C and D) there’s already someone standing at A & D (as far away from each other as you can get) so where do you go? Well I’ll tell you this, you don’t use the urinal, you go in the stall. Ladies if you don’t believe me ask your husbands.

Southwest is a true test of that, yesterday when I was boarding the plane it was not very full so people weren’t forced to sit next to each other….today is probably going to be different because it’s so full.
Here’s my favorite thing to do – next time you go to the beach (go early when there’s only a few people there) take your towel and spread it out RIGHT NEXT to someone else. See what happens…..

5 comments:

Xmichra said...

hahah, that is so funny. I am one of those people who do not like my personal circumference of happy being breached. Don't know why exactly.. must be made up in my dna. I have noticed that the real estate industry has crammed houses so very close together now that you could smell your neighbors passing wind given the closeness. Maybe that's why we like our space so much, we are prone to not having it so demand it in awkward stranger places.

Kat said...

lmao. When I went to see Batman Begins alone I left a space between me and the couple to the left. Then a couple came in and sat on my right, also leaving a seat. Well, it became so packed that an usher asked me to move one seat over and let a couple sit! I didn't mind, he was very polite, but it was was funny that in a FULL theater, I almost had three seats to myself!

And veggie is right, we do ask strangers for toilet paper if our stall is out!

Andrea Knapp said...

I LOVE flying Southwest. I flew with them the first time I went to Vegas and would fly with them forever onwards if I could!

clew said...

This phenomenon has even happened with me and people I KNOW. I used to have a roommate who had no concept of personal space. She'd stand 2 inches away from me when she talked to me. I felt like I needed to claw my way backwards.

The "this is my breathing room" thing is a peculiar territory.

ads510 said...

I have had this conversation with my fiance a million times...he calls it "the guy rule"--the whole space b/w urinals (using the stall instead) and movie seats. He even does this with his friends--if he and another guy go to a movie, they leave a space, but if we go on a double date, the guys can sit together. I just don't get it!