I'd like to whine about something that bothers me when I fly, or at least it used to bother me. I've been fortunate enough to avoid business travel for several years now, but for a while I was traveling from Boston to San Jose pretty much monthly. I think the American flight I took typically used 727s, which have a three and three seat arrangement, if I recall correctly.
Anyway, I would generally try to get a window seat, because I don't like people stepping over me and I don't enjoy getting my arm taken off at the elbow by the beverage cart. Usually, there would be just one other guy in the row, in the aisle seat - I seemed to have pretty good luck avoiding having someone in the middle seat. What would bug me was that this other guy in my row would inevitably take over the pleasantly empty middle chair and put all his crap on it.
Now, I travel pretty light - I really didn't need that space. But it's the principle of the thing! No "Do you mind if I put my stuff here?", no "Do you need some of this room?", just boom - middle seat filled with crap.
I suppose that I could have spoken up, but what would I have said? "Excuse me, I really don't need the space, but could you leave this seat empty?" That would be ridiculous. Nevertheless (or alwaysthemore, huh, Tom?), I would seethe over this for the entire flight, and as you can tell, it still bothers me five years later.
Sure, I'm a head case - we all knew that.
Fortunately, the airlines have solved this particular problem for me by filling every flight to capacity and beyond. Even the people who bring aboard oversized luggage which damn well should have been checked are being thwarted lately. So is it worth sitting next to a fat sweaty guy for several hours to avoid having my row mate malappropriate the middle seat? You bet your frequent flyer miles it is!
You can respond to my ranting here.
We love to rant - and it shows.