How Dare He Fly Economy
“I was late to the airport due to heavy traffic and missed the cutoff for the baggage drop and hence my flight. Someone directed me over to the customer service desk to see about being rebooked on another flight. As it turns out, the next flight had one seat free and the customer service rep was happy to move me.
Whilst this was being done, another man was standing next to me at the desk, arguing with the customer service person because he’d also missed his flight, and demanding that he be rebooked on the next flight because he had a meeting to get to and he was very important and why are you not rebooking me, don’t you know you’re just staff and should be doing as you’re told? This guy was being way too rude for something that wasn’t even the airline’s fault.
The rep serving him says, ‘We can’t get you on a flight to Brisbane until later tonight as they’re all full, however we do have a flight to the Gold Coast, which is only an hour away from Brisbane, in an hour. Otherwise, you can take your chances on someone not turning up for a Brisbane flight and you can go on standby. Which of those would you prefer?’
The dude starts on a rant saying that’s not good enough, he HAS to be in Brisbane for a meeting and they WILL find him a seat on the next direct flight to Brisbane. The rep says, ‘No, I’ve provided the options available to you, which of those would you prefer?’
The obnoxious guy then starts another rant, ending it with, ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM AND HOW IMPORTANT I AM?’
The rep has clearly had enough of this nonsense and says, ‘Mate, I don’t care who you are, and if you’re flying economy, you’re clearly nobody important. Which option do you want?’
The guy went off on another rant, but I think he soon realized he wasn’t getting anything other than the options provided.”
Male Karen Pulls Out “Frequent Flyer” Card, Gets What He Deserves
“We were flying through really, really, really bad turbulence, seat belt sign obviously on, and everyone seated and hanging on for dear life. Guy gets up out of his business class seat and attempts to make way towards the toilet, cannoning off other passengers and accidentally elbowing one lady in face, breaking her nose. Amidst the screams from the lady, I tell him to sit down immediately. His response: ‘No, it’s fine. I’m a Platinum Frequent Flyer, it’s fine.’ Dumbfounded by that level of stupidity and entitlement, I try and help the lady with the broken bloody nose, ignoring the assist bell from the bathroom. He later emerges, enraged that we hadn’t responded to the toilet bell to help him. Yep, you guessed it, he’d pee’d all over himself because of the turbulence. Not the best time to use the bathroom as it turns out.”
Pizza = Precious Cargo For Yet Another Male Karen
“I was on a flight from New York City to Portland. Only empty seat was next to me, a middle seat.
Door is about to close when a large sweaty man comes running onto the plane to claim the empty seat. He was carrying a full size pizza box…
All overhead bins were already closed and full but that didn’t stop him from proceeding to open them to find a place to stash his pizza. The stewardess kindly informed him that he couldn’t put his pizza in an overhead bin. ‘But it’ll get stepped on!’ he gruffly informs her. She proceeded to tell him to take his seat and put the pizza in front of him. He told her that he flies with pizza all the time and has never been treated this way. He persisted but as their argument was getting pretty heated, he finally succumbed and put the pizza under the seat in front of him and sat down.
The stewardesses have now started the safety video/demonstration and he pulls out a flip phone and proceeds to make a call. I can tell he’s going through menus, so I’m thinking he’s calling Delta to complain. Nope, turns out to be his landline phone company. He had been late paying his bill and was trying to get them to waive the late fee. They wouldn’t. He is arguing with them. Plane has pushed back from the gate and is headed toward the runway at this point.
Stewardess comes over and tells him he needs to put his phone away, NOW. He motions with his hand to say ‘one minute.’
‘No, sir, it needs to be put away NOW.’ He flips it shut dramatically mid-sentence and puts it in his pocket. The stewardess walks back to the front of the plane. He then decides to stretch. I’m pretty much plastered to the wall trying to stay out of his way as he extends his arms up, and then to the side, etc. and then twists in his seat back and forth, clearly agitated. He then extends his arms up, stretches out his fingers and proceeds to crack his knuckles very expressively one at a time, sorta like a primary school bully would do on the playground before they were gonna beat you up. During that whole knuckle cracking process, he made an obscene gesture toward the flight attendant.
Next thing I know, I can tell we’re pulling back into the gate. ‘Flight attendants prepare for arrival and cross check.’ Door opens. Cockpit door opens. Captain comes to our row. ‘Sir, I understand you were harassing my flight attendant. I need you to leave the plane now.’ The pizza man attempted to argue and even asks me and the other neighboring passenger if we had witnessed anything. Clearly the pilot wasn’t budging on his decision, so the guy got his pizza off the floor and left the plane. Door closed and we departed, now with an empty seat next to me.”
Poor Guy Can’t Win
“I am a college student and thus naturally people think that it would be much easier to force me into switching seats.
There was this one time I was on a really long flight from Chicago to India. I usually never haggle much about seat and am pretty cool about switching if people ask me for it since I hate conflict. This time I was fortunate enough to get one of those front seat with a lot of legroom. I knew this seemed too good to be true and that at any moment a couple with a baby would ask for the seat, at which I wold cave.
Minutes later, just as I predicted, this couple came up to me asking me to switch because they had a baby and the father was sitting next to me. The mother had a middle seat way back into the plane for a very long flight. I was hesitant, but with 3 people awkwardly waiting on me to say yes, I eventually caved.
As I was moving my stuff, one of my small empty plastic bottles fell from my bag and nearly hit the father. Now, you have to understand this was one of those light plastic water bottles that would barely hurt if you tried to hit someone with it let alone when it falls from your bag. But for some reason, that angered the father into believing that it could have somehow seriously injured their baby. Even after apologizing to him for a solid minute, he kept shouting at me about how careless I was and that I need to learn plane etiquette.
That just did it for me. I told him that I was no longer comfortable with the switch and just went back to my seat and pretended super hard to fall asleep. The entire flight, he did try his best to annoy me such as fighting me on the hand rest and making it hard for me to move around, but I never felt so good about my ‘plane etiquette.'”
Flight Attendant Quickly Humbles This Male Karen
“I once got stranded at Newark for 22 hours after our flight had an unfixable fault and was cancelled late at night. We got put up in a hotel but, understandably by the time the new flight rolled around, everyone was quite tired and agitated.
As we are waiting to board the new flight, the flight attendant announces they would be boarding people with additional needs and families with young children first, followed by first class, then premium economy, etc. All pretty standard stuff, obviously it can take a bit longer for people in wheelchairs to board so makes sense for them to go on first – it’s common on most airlines, I believe.
Anyway, this business dude races to the front of the crowd and starts yelling at the attendant, saying it was, ‘disgusting that he had lost a day due to their INCOMPETENCE and now he had to wait even longer despite being a first class passenger and paying a lot of money every year to fly with them!’
The worst part is, he’s looking at others in the crowd to back him up, like it’s perfectly reasonable to scream at this woman who, like us, had also been stranded, had most likely had very little sleep, and was doing her best to do her job in this difficult situation.
But she was awesome. Without missing a beat, she smiled, nodded, and said, ‘Ok sir,’ then made a big point of leaning into her mic and telling the waiting line of people in wheelchairs and mothers with babies that this gentleman needed to board before them and could they please wait.
Literally every single person at the gate was looking at this guy with disgust as he tries to backtrack and say he doesn’t mind waiting for the first group, but the attendant says, ‘No, no. You made yourself quite clear – let’s get you boarded, the others will have to wait.’ He is humiliated as he sheepishly walks by. She handled it perfectly.”