Do you recline your
airplane seat back?
It seems like such a small thing, but it’s the kind of small thing that a lot of people feel passionately about. More and more incidents of “air rage” these days have been spurred by both passengers who have had the person sitting in front of them move their seat back and those who have been prevented from doing so at their leisure.
It’s the perfect example of an act most people consider to be a basic right, but which often comes at the inconvenience of someone else. On the one hand it seems so trivial that it’s hard to understand why it would bother someone, but on the other hand the difference in “comfort” afforded by those few inches is so minimal that to insist upon it does seem like an act of inconsiderate entitlement.
I think a lot of people have never even thought about it as they’ve reclined their seat back and–to me–that’s the problem. Too often people in the public sphere make decisions that fail to acknowledge the simple reality that they are not the only person in the universe–that their choices DO impact the people around them. If the person sitting in front of me were thoughtful enough to turn around and ask me if it was okay if they put their seat back, I can’t think of an instance where I would deny them, but when they do it immediately as soon as they sit down I can’t help but have the word “asshole” flash inside my mind.
Of course, many will insist that they have good reasons to put their chair back and I don’t deny this is true, but what I’m asking is if they have ever considered how affording themselves a tiny bit more room means taking it away from someone else? And if they’ve had, does it make a difference? Would you actually suggest that having the ability to take something means you should be able to do it without anyone calling you on it?
Like I said, it’s a tiny, trivial gesture and the people flipping out about it on both sides probably have other serious issues they are dealing with, but these small gestures can–when combined together–eventually inform the totality of who we are, which is why I leave my seat where it is and sigh with annoyance as my tray table gets pushed forward towards me.
The last time I flew, a man dropped a flowerpot on my head while putting his belongings in the overhead. Yes, a flowerpot. Luckily it was a plastic flowerpot with plastic flowers, but still … it hurt! And the worst was, not only did he NOT apologize, he glared at me, as though angry that his precious item had possibly been damaged by my head. When I fly, I try to get into the mindset that I will be cramped, miserable and frustrated, and suffer endless petty indignities, but time will pass and I will just endure. Nothing else to… Read more »
I’ll take the click bait here. The only problem that I can ascertain from this is tall people who can’t put their feet under the seats. A reclining seat may impact them (pun intended). The solution would be going first class or buying your ticket early and picking an exit lane seat or the row behind the first class bulkhead. Otherwise you have people using a feature of a seat that everyone knows about and almost everyone uses. But thank God for the media alerting me to this crisis.
“Too often people in the public sphere make decisions that fail to acknowledge the simple reality that they are not the only person in the universe–that their choices DO impact the people around them” We are talking about something that quite frankly is a ‘first world probem’, the media is all over this, someone leans their seat back and OMG, that person behind them is so hard done by. There is a huge problem is society where a person makes a decision that benefits them and society only cares that it benefits them and what others think or how hurts… Read more »