I wish I could read people better. My manager can sit through a meeting and pick up on body language and nuances that I just don’t see and figure out people. I can do this to some extent, but not to the extent I’d like to.
I can pick up the obvious cues, when someone is a an asshole and I’ve got a nice accurate gaydar. My inability to accurately and completely read people has not served me well in the past as indicated by more than average divorce decrees in my permanent files.
But today I think I did pretty good at reading people and wanted to share my observations.
The place: Memphis Airport, 6 am, Gate B11, Delta flight to Atlanta departing at 7:05.
I won’t muss up my clever post with the hassle of getting to the airport that early, you know, the fact I had to get up at 3:30 am and my suitcase was too fat to squeeze into the truck of my new car. I’ll save that for later.
I sat watching the people arrive at the gate and kept up my eagle eye investigations through our landing in Atlanta at 8:45 EST.
I identified the Infrequent Flyers. Here they are:
The 60-something man in the patchwork, quilted, seer sucker golf pants in red, orange and pink. No one wears pants like that in public. He is either recently single or he played flute in the junior high band and recalls those days as the best times of his life.
The 30-something chick who just crawled out of bed and still had on pajama pants. Yes, I know 7 am is early for a flight. If you don’t think you can get your ass out of bed in time to at least put pants on, then just sleep in your clothes.
The 30-somthing chick traveling with her bed pillow as her carry-on.
The older (than me) lady who kept reading her boarding pass as if it were a suspense novel. She seriously could not put it down. If she did take her eyes off of it to look up and listen to the pre-recorded announcements, she went right back to reading it as soon as the announcement was over.
The group of women carrying bags of foul smelling food and juggling jumbo cups of coffee from the Lenny’s counter onto the plane along with three carry-ons and recent eidtions of National Enquirer.
The tall nice looking 30-something man who sat in the window seat next to me. I figured this out when he would not let me get up and let him in his seat, instead he tried to crawl over me, stepped on my feet and nearly kneed me in the chest.
The 40-something lady one row behind and across the aisle from me. Her ipod was on so loud I could hear it over the engine noise. She was bobbing her head as if in a club trying to draw the attention of a dance partner and her ipod was so loud she could not hear the flight attendant’s announcement to turn off and stow all portable electronic devices. Either that or she thought she was too cool for the rules to apply to her.
The lady across the aisle from me who pulled out her medium sized carry-on, put it on her arm rest and held it there after the flight attendant told her to put it away. Perhaps the flight attendant only wanted her to put it away for a minute? Although whether a person follows the rules or not is not my business, I recognize unsecured carry-on shit as a danger to my safety in the event of a bad landing or wind shear. Even something as lame a book becomes a deadly missile in just the right unfortunate airlanding event.
There were numerous infrequently flyers I didn’t single out, but they were all obvious when it was time to deplane. Instead of following the protocol of allowing those in front of you to get up and go down the aisle first, there was a mad push of people barreeling down the aisle not letting anyone out of their seats.
The 60-something cocky man who blocked everyone else from picking up their valet checked bags off the cart because he couldn’t find his. He fondled and pulled out every black bag on the cart, and due to his size, blocked the rest of us from getting ours. I pushed to the front to grab mine and as soon as I got my hand on it, Mr. Obivilous decided to head butt me in the crotch while he wrestled a bag from the bottom shelf. I hope he enjoyed that. If I were not deathly afriad of the NO FLY LIST, I would have done something horrible to him in return. Especially since he didn’t even acknowledge he hit me.
See? I’m doing better reading people. I picked them all this morning.
Tags: Flying, Infrequent Flyers
