DON'T BE: The Psychopath In This Story. DO BE: My Friend :)
I'm going to be at a bar on tuesday (6/2) in DC. You're invited.
So I get on this plane today and my assigned seat is a window seat in the second to last row and it’s all full, so I waited until the last second to be the final person to board the plane just in case there was a better unfilled seat. I’m walking down the aisle checking out the seats and it’s all full and then I get to 33 and as I’m about to ask these two people to get up and let me into my window seat, I notice that the absolute back row—35—has two empty seats. There is a woman in the window seat but the middle and aisle seat are open. I ask the flight attendant if they need that row, and they say no, so I tell the people in 33, “I’ll just sit in that aisle seat.” Then, out of instinctive politeness, I say unthinkingly to the woman in 35A, “Is anyone sitting here?” I did not mean this in earnest. I knew no one was sitting there. I had confirmed it with the flight attendant. I regret saying it. But she said “no, no one is sitting there,” by which point I was already sitting in the aisle seat and sighing relief that I didn’t have to share an armrest with anyone.
And then, dear reader, things got awkward.
The chick in the window seat to my left says, “Excuse me, excuse me,” and I cock my head left and smile, and she says, “I didn’t mean you could sit here. I was going to have the whole row to myself.” And with my facial expression, I replied, “I understand those hopes, and I know I have dashed yours, but tough shit.” Then, to avoid further interactions with this psychopath, I put in some AirPods that had no battery.
This should have been the end of the story, but the woman did not give up. She flagged down the flight attendant and said, “Excuse me, once this flight has taken off, can this guy go sit in his assigned seat?” And the flight attendant said, “No, it’s an empty seat. He can sit there.”
“But I really thought I was going to have this whole row. I have been working a lot. I just did two shifts, and I was expecting to have the whole row.”
“Well, ma’am, if you had bought the whole row, you would, but you didn’t, so he can sit there.”
I heard all of this perfectly because, again, my AirPods were not producing any sound.
Then we taxied and took off and the woman glared at me for a few hours.
As is obvious to all thinking people, I did nothing wrong.
As is also obvious to all thinking people, this chick is a nut job! Thinking she has ownership of the whole row just because no one else was assigned to the row?
Everyone knows the feeling of thinking you have a row to yourself and having those hopes dashed at the last second. We can all empathize with this situation, but in civilized society, you are not allowed to bully someone out of it.
Beyond just not doing anything wrong, I am, in fact, a hero.
A hero?
YES. Because I made life better for not only myself but also the desperate benighted fellows of row 33!
Let us consider what this woman wanted!
This lady encountered a fork in the road. She could shake her head and think “damn, so close,” or, like Richard III, she could prove herself a villain.
Why would she be a villain, Ben?
Well, I’ll tell you why!
She asked the authority figure to force me to force two other people to suffer with me.
In the universe that existed she (crank), me (protagonist), 33D (some person) and 33E (the lucky duck who had been cursed with a middle seat), were able to be four people in seating for six. No one had to be in the middle. 33E got to move into the window at 33F. No one had to share an armrest. This is utilitarian! What this sociopath wanted was to force three of those people to suffer so she could have an entire row to herself! What good is the whole row? Was she going to lie out? Should the fine nameless people of 33D and 33E (who got to move into 33F, leaving 33E open) and I have been forced by the State to suffer just so this woman could lay out? No!
It is also true that we must practice intellectual honesty and acknowledge that on many occasions we have been in her situation and hoped that no one dared break their seat assignments, unjust as they were, so that we could have our own row. This is human. It is human to want to profit from the world’s chaotic miasma. What we have never done, and indeed would never do, is ask the flight attendant to effectuate such outcomes for us.
Anyways, this was all a roundabout way of saying that I’m in DC for a few days to go to WelcomeFest. And Josh Barro, Megan McCardle, and I are doing a little Central Air bar meetup on Tuesday, June 2 (today!) at 6pm, and if you promise not to shoot any of us, you should come!
Actually, Ben, the true hero of your story is the flight attendant who told the crank to pound sand. You are the beneficiary of her thoughtfulness and you do get credit for creating the *possibility* for her action. If you saw a house ablaze and called 911, the heroes would be the fire department members who put out the fire. Unless, of course, you first rushed into the burning building and carried the three orphans out to safety, risking near death. Which I know you would do.
So yes obviously you are in the right on any conceivable moral theory. Now I can tell my airplane story. I'm on an international flight sitting in premium economy in one of the aisle seats in the middle section. The seat to my right is open and I am very pleased about this. I'm settled in, reading my book, and getting ready to doze off (for some reason I just instantly conk out on airplanes). But, a few minutes after we're at cruising altitude, this guy a few rows back flags down the flight attendant. His entertainment system isn't working and he wants to move to a seat with a working system. So he comes over and sits to my right and starts watching stuff (and pretty loud through his headphones). Obviously I am annoyed, but I suppose he can sit in the seat. I don't get much sleep, though, and I know I'll be awake for the rest of the flight. Then, when the lights dim, I turn on my reading light to read my book, and he tells me "Hey, it's dark, you need to turn off that light." I should have told him to move back to his own goddamn seat.