Dear people who work at the airport
life-after-ssri.bearblog.dev
life-after-ssri.bearblog.dev
Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.
Ugh, the industry still needs to do so much work to this end. There are good shops out there, fwiw, but the elitism is real. Totally counterproductive for a means of conveyance that is so elegantly classless (in the positive, egalitarian sense).
[0]though adjusting the tension spring on the brake levers still puzzles me sometimes... Looser should mean it travels more when you squeeze and release the brake lever, right? Stiffer spring has less displacement for a given force. Not quite. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/canti-direct.html#parallel
I used to bike with a few bike shop employees and they were only in it to eke out a living doing something adjacent to the thing they love, selling bikes was not their passion, riding them and talking about the tech was.
At least 10 years ago, wages in the whole sector were pretty low, so you'd only work there if you really wanted to and valued perks like buying bikes at wholesale (hey, that's half off) and having access to tools or a mechanic buddy.
This is not that.
The only bike shops that aren't this way are going to be relatively small and new establishments where the owner is the only guy there. Do not expect the advice or inventory to be all that great.
If you just want the advice, catch the salesman that he's eventually forced to hire when they're off work at the bar.
I'm pretty sure I know who is more responsible for ruining cycling.
Fortunately my local shop in the suburbs here couldn't be more different. They're patient and lovely with my kids, efficient and non-condescending with my wife, will even send a little car to your house to collect a broken bike for service - whether or not they sold it.
They are probably a good choice if buying a bike as they are reasonably cheap but have decent availability of spares and servicing unlike no name Chinese bikes.
This is my personal favorite story about bike shops (from circa 2008).
At the time, I both lived and worked in Manhattan. I was lucky that biking was an option for commuting but the only bike I had was a 20 year old Giant Acapulco (not a fancy bike at all).
I worked down in Tribeca and one day on the way to work my shifters just broke. Thankfully, there was a bike shop near work so I dropped of the bike in the morning and said I would be back that afternoon.
Fast forward to the afternoon and I come in to pick up my bike (as I assumed it was an easy fix and they would just charge me). The repair counter guy looks at my ticket, checks something and says he has to go get the manager. This is somewhat confusing as this was a simple fix or repair.
The manager comes out and several of the staff are arrayed behind him. Now I'm a mixture of concerned and fascinated as to what could possibly have happened to my bike given this deployment of bike shop personnel.
Manager: "Sir, the repair for your shifters is going to cost $40"
Me: "Ok, is there an issue with that?"
Manager: "Well, a quality used bike would cost you about $60 so we weren't sure how you would want us to proceed"
(I should add that the staff behind him all seemed as though they were holding their breath here).
Me: "That's cool. I'm good with the repair"
Everyone visibly relaxed, the manager turned around, pointed at one guy, then turned back to me and said "Your bike will be ready tomorrow."
My only thought on this level of nervousness is due to the shop being near a lot of investment bank offices that had a very type A guys who were also into bike racing. I myself dealt with a lot of those folks so it's not hard to imagine the shop staff assuming I would be that way too.
I think the sort of lingo-centric scoffing “expertise” is a defensive posture that near-novices tend to take, to scare off further questions. You see it in every field, and we should all be careful not to replicate it in our own.
also, it's easiest to use that same app for the boarding pass too these days
once I printed them out (with the provided pdf) thinking it would be easier, the printed paper didn't work and they said I HAD to install and use the app or go back to a kiosk and use one of their printouts and lose my place in line...)
It is really anxiety inducing overall though. Not to mention the ritual of getting partly undressed before the stupid thing then trying to put everything back on and in pockets on the other side.
Laptops: In/Out
Liquids: In/Out
Shoes: On/Off
Etc
Recently had to fly with some splints and crutches and stuff and that was a whole extra set of fun difference in airport rules. First one really wanted to rub their explosives swab on my finger that was held together by exposed metal pins and had exposed subcutaneous tissue. They were a bit put off when I asked for alternate options.
- Laptop: In Tray / In bag
- Shoes: Wear / Remove
I’m sure we can come up with clear wording for such a sign lol.
Also: here’s a list of things we are constitutionally not allowed to require, but if you choose to opt out you have a random 1:1 chance of being selected for an invasive “enhanced” screening.
Also: here’s where you can pay your bribe^H^H^H^H*Hfee to be prescreened so the whole process is easier for you unless we decide we you should be on the list that we randomly select for “enhanced” screening. Then your children get to watch a large man put his hands all over your body in ways that they’ve been told to never let a stranger touch you. And if you speak up, we’ll do it you your minor children too.
Which leaves me confused with GP's suggestion. Every TSA line I've been in already has these signs. Are airports in other countries worse about their signage than TSA?
If I worked retail and treated customers like the TSA treats passengers, I'd be fired the first day.
I also go through the trusted traveler line, and the rules there are _usually_ different (but not always!) and I definitely don't recall seeing any sign specifically addressing the rules for that line at any point. Except maybe one at the start clarifying _who_ can use the line (though on that one I've also had the TSA agents go ahead and explain the rules entirely different than the sign they were standing in front of so...).
A whiteboard I might trust because it was likely handwritten that morning
When I pointed to the other agent and said “your friend over there told me to do the opposite, that’s why it’s in there!” they just sort of scowled at me.
I just smiled and went about my day, but yes the TSA is often just a total dumpster fire. Some folks are very nice but too many of their folks have a giant chip on their shoulder about something.
Recent fun experience in Amsterdam:
security line was moving veeeery slowly. Almost every bag got flagged for inspection. As I’m waiting for my bag to get checked, I see two agents briefly mutter in each others ears. One of them walks up to the lady manning the xray machine, taps her on the shoulder, says something in her ear and they swap places. He goes on xray machine, she start checking bags.
Almost every bag after that passed the xray test. Line started moving quickly
Until a few weeks ago when a another TSA official berated me for thinking I could walk through a metal detector wearing a watch...
You're supposed to the watch/bracelet, but you do have to hold your wrist close to your body. You kind of want to hold your hands in front of your body as if you're about to grab one of your wrists with your other hand.
Watches and other jewelry are basically right at the cutoff of detection. They want to detect small knives but not earrings.
This is all absolutely tribal airport knowledge. I had been traveling for work for years, taken hundreds of flights, but I only found this out when my partner tried to go through a metal detector with a semi-permanent bracelet that requires a small screwdriver to take off, and the TSA person mercifully told her exactly how to pose as she walked through the detector.
Most recent flight we took, she couldn't find her passport for the extra security check right before the gate. It took us about half an hour to get around to having the security open up the (now closed) bag scanner, which lo and behold, had somehow eaten her (securely places in the bin) passport. The tech was shaking his head, saying "See, this is why you don't put your passport loose in the bin" as if that's a normal thing everyone already knows specifically to avoid.
Literally never heard of that.
In one airport, I had a TSA agent yell at me that I'm not allowed to bring two laptops through precheck in my bag. That they had to go through separately. I complied but asked if that was this airport's policy because no other airport seemed to care. She swore up and down that this was national TSA policy and I should know better if I flew so much.
When I look at the TSA's success rates in audits, I tend to agree with the claim that it is more a government jobs program than a security agency.
All while gaining basically no transferrable skills.
*Also, a significant portion of these strangers are headed to destinations and experiences you could never dream of affording or having the opportunity to access.
Reinforced cockpit doors are basically invisible, but they've also basically made hijackings impossible, especially when coupled with the fact that passengers will no longer assume the plane will safely land and negotiate.
After the 20th time you ask someone to take out their laptop, there’s a part of you that’s screaming, “we’ve done this 20 times, you should know this by now!” Of course, “we” haven’t done this 20 times, only one side of the interaction has the repeated experience. But it’s natural to project that onto the other person, and get into a mode of, “I’ve told you before.”
Obviously this can be overcome, I'm not sure TSA hires people with enough self awareness to even see the problem.
FWIW though, I rarely had bad experiences with airport staff. They are just trying to do their jobs in a hectic place and don’t intentionally make our lives difficult.
For the most part I agree most are at least neutral though. I.e. they are there because it's a job, not because they hate people or love people and this job was the way to do that. It's just the ones that do tend to really stand out for people.
It is when you get to the security is where you meet the UpsideDown. Condescending, most all of them, ime.
I am hedging because i have had nuggets of exceptional service and support here and there, even in nightmarish hellscapes like Heathrow. Flight attendants are a whole different area of joy and fears...
Lazy/incompetent/annoyed employees is the inevitable outcome of such an environment
Yes, exactly. But actually, given what they must be paid they do an admirable job. I can’t truly blame someone for not giving a shit, it’s just frustrating for me when getting on my flight depends on them doing so.
The one thing that kind of works for me is, “Well, what should I do?” when they bark orders about what I can’t do.
“You can’t have your boarding pass in your hand!”, when you’re in the x-ray. “Where should I put it now?”
Oh well, it turns out I actually can have it in my hand. Thanks.
When i attempted to find airport maps, I was met with a mess of mobile apps, mobile website pdf's, and an enormous amount of text.
Just... give me an easy to use map. Call out the obvious use cases like "how to transfer terminals" and "your bags will/will-not be checked through".
Feels like your explanation is missing a few steps.
Which would be great if it was actually accurate. Took a United flight two days ago. Checked two bags. App only reported one bag loaded onto plane. Spent the flight anxiously wondering if the other bag had been lost. Both bags arrived fine.
I'd rather have no information than unreliable information.
I got to LAX and I proceeded to try to find my UA flight, but the flight number was nowhere to be found. I waited a bit and when it still didn’t show up on the monitor, I asked a gate agent. The agent looked at my ticket and told me to keep waiting.
Eventually I started to get worried as my departure time was approaching. I asked another gate agent, and this time I was informed my flight was not a United flight at all! It was a US Airways flight. Also, it was in a completely different terminal. Also, at LAX to move between terminals you have to exit security and hike across parking structures and parking lots. There was no way I would make my flight.
I looked at my ticket and sure enough, in small print it said “operated by US airways.” I hadn’t even noticed this, but even if I had, how was I supposed to know that this meant it was literally not a United flight at all?
Thankfully a friendly customer service agent took mercy on me and got me booked on an American flight later that day.
I later learned from a flight attendant friend that this was called a “code share” and it was subsequently changed to make it more user friendly.
There are a million things like this I don’t even think about anymore because I travel so much. But when I think back to those days of early adulthood I remember how stressful and confusing airports could be.
As far as I can tell the difference between them is that a personal item can't have wheels.
They could've saved a lot of time and labor by just letting me check it like I would have before they started charging $30-50 each way for it.
Checking the bag used to be free, and this was not the case.
This also allows me to actually plan for what I need on the plane versus what I don't, instead of an at-gate shuffle of medications and charger blocks from one bag to another.
What’s weird is, I agree, the way it’s described and marketed. Carry on add-ons should be sold as ‘small checked bag’. As it is, if you know your carry on is going to be gate checked it’s easy to plan where you pack your lithium battery devices; if you don’t you’ll be doing the gate check shuffle.
But it's unnecessarily implemented in a costly, inefficient, annoying way that makes the entire experience worse to no one's benefit.
A lot of the constraints in how airlines can market service levels are imposed by the ticketing aggregation standards and how fares show up in searches. There are also issues with creating differences in luggage standards between regional and long haul flights because of through ticketing.
It’s probably more complicated than it looks from the outside, and all falls into the same problem of overall air travel inscrutability caused by the ‘it makes sense to the people who are in it but looks Byzantine from outside’ problems the original article here is complaining about.
It's a way to make more money off people for worse service, with the externalities going on people who can't do anything about it.
Source: I fly circa 50 times a year.
For people who travel for work, how often do you get a checked bag in your fare?
I have boarded with a wheeled carry-on + wheeled personal item (a backpack with wheels) in the past, but every time the gate agent tested the personal item for size.
They could also just say "only one carry-on can go in the overhead bin."
At most gates, I've seen the little boxes that are used to size test carry on luggage to also have a section to size test personal items.
My experience is that it barely fits a large backpack with some books, snacks, and at least one 15 inch laptop.
Carry on luggage can be much, much larger.
> I frequently travel with a duffel bag carry-on that goes in the overhead
Yes, that is one carry on luggage item, and one personal item.
>They could also just say "only one carry-on can go in the overhead bin."
No because you are not afforded two carry on luggage items. One item has to be small enough to fit under the seat in front of you.
Additionally I want to make a scene every time I hand over documents and get told "I don't need this" since if I hadn't provided that ID/Passport/Boarding pass there was an equal chance I'd get berated for not providing it. There is zero empathy for the traveller. If I walk forward I get yelled at, if I wait to be called I get yelled at, it's infuriating. Everything about the airport feels like a lose-lose scenario to me.
I don't fly that often and every time I do I hate the airport experience so much because I feel like I'm constantly doing _something_ wrong.
The security theater of the TSA is just the moldy cherry on top of the shit sundae that is flying.
The entire airport experience is me trying to watch the people in front of me and try to decipher what I need to do to comply best. I still feel like a fish out of water every time.
I recently flew and the airport had gotten the new scanners since the last time I had gone somewhere. The signage was confusing as only some of the lines had signs that specifically said you didn't have to take out your electronics on "this lane only". Even with the new scanners they were pulling out half the bags for additional screening and only had one person doing the additional screening.
Coming back from overseas I saw how it was supposed to work, walked up and they directed me to a line and a specific bin loading station, had someone remind me to ensure my pockets were empty, walked through the scanner and my bag was already waiting for me, took all of 2 minutes.
That's not why she was anxious! She was anxious because, according to author's own account, this is someone:
a) flying for the first time
b) hardly speaks English
c) is in a foreign country
d) solo responsible for 4 grand kids running around
etc.
Blaming the airport staff who have to optimize for the greater good is quite something.
The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport.
The whole point is that airport staff (and especially leadership) are maybe not so great at "optimizing for the greater good" always.
>The author gave plenty of other reasons why someone might be stressed out by what's communicated at the airport.
Without objective accounts (ie. a picture), it's unclear whether that's due to poor design or just poor comprehension/situational awareness from the person reading it. For instance, "Now boarding - remain seated" seems like pretty standard priority boarding (eg. first class boards first, economy stays seated). If you're bad at english and all you can do is scan for random keywords, and/or it's your first time flying and you're not aware of this, you might be confused. But there's also so much you can do for this target audience.
The point is not asking one to do something for the target audience beyond showing a bit of compassion. If the passenger is lost/confused and is being yelled at it would do nothing to either diffuse the situation or help the passenger. Hand-holding one or two passengers would only make the experience pleasant enough for them. It has the effect of them learning something they did not know and also wanting to come back again.
That's physically not possible if all you have is a single display in front of the gate, which is common at most airports. Of course, you can add "First class - now boarding, everyone else - stay seated" but for OP's case where there's reading comprehension issues I doubt that would help.
>I don't think that they can, so it's a bad message that probably came into existence because of some entertaining concatenation of events that somebody in the airport business could be able to explain.
It's not hard to think why it's necessary. Otherwise you have a hoarde of economy people clogging up the gates when it's only supposed to be first class people.
I don't think it's actually as noble as "optimizing for the greater good", but rather "optimizing for getting through the day in one piece". Which, in my experience, is why (polite + friendly + reasonable + firm) is the right register to use in pretty much every interaction with airport staff. You're asking them to do something (not telling), but your presence is ideally vaguely net positive (friendly, smiling, relaxed), you're asking for something that's within their authority to do, and there's a vague threat that you're not going to back down if they say no off-hand (their day is going to have a larger hassle-increment if they say no vs. if they say yes).
Written out it kind of reads as cold and calculating, but I think every element of it is the best for everyone involved. You don't end up feeling like you just acquiesced to getting screwed by United or Delta, they get to have a nice friendly interaction that ideally makes those 10 minutes of their day suck less than it could have with an asshole customer.
> c) is in a foreign country
So you don't want tourists to your Country? You do realize 95% of the World lives outside the US? and at least 80% lives in non-English speaking Countries? Creating a horrid experience for them would mean losing huge chuck of that wealth flowing into your Country. Especially so when their income levels are rising drastically compared to a US Citizen (in terms of % change in disposable income as many are from low cost of living countries).
I love to travel to places where I don’t understand the language. What exhilarates me even more is going to places where I also don’t understand the script!
My point was merely that this is one element that turns up the anxiety dial, which I think is self-evident.
It touches on a “race to the bottom” that European low cost carriers have have shown that people don’t care about airport stress in the shadow of cost — which lends to the enshittification of the whole overall experience.
It’s so bad that people are starting to /pay/ to have less stress by visiting airport lounges, which are now starting to be, themselves, overcrowded due to the increase in demand.[1]
[1]. https://web.archive.org/web/20260714133432/https://www.globa...
Greater good my posterior. The grandma was in the wrong place at that time because they optimised the experience to extract the most money out of the flying public. They were boarding the people who paid extra, and since she didn't they couldn't let her board. Because if they do why would anyone pay extra for their "higher class" more expensive tickets. They could have said "passport?" and then pointed her towards the gate. But doing so as a policy would net the corporation less profit. So they don't.
In other words the grandma's distress was by design. You can avoid the indignity of turned away from the gate by coughing up more money. She quite literally "didn't know her place" both in the queue and in the hierarchy.
The experience doesn't have to be so stressful and confusing, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
I can't remember which airports/countries/systems require which procedures, so I just have to go in blind every time.
I was at O’hare for the first time in a few decades a few weeks ago and my flight was delayed due to some mechanical issue with the assigned plane. At least that’s what the app said. Because of the delay, the gate kept changing. We were supposed to know this because every once in a while the gate we were at no longer said it was our flight, so there must be some other location. I think at least one of the times it was mentioned over the PA, but besides the flight number everything else was unintelligible.
We see other flights to our destination that were scheduled after ours from the same airline on the same type of plane boarding and leaving. It doesn’t matter that our tickets were from earlier in the day. They’ve already screwed over 150 passengers. Screwing them over more is far less bad than delaying them slightly but having to also delay later flights by a little bit, too. I think we watched three flights leave. As a group of six, with four children, the likelihood of standby coming through on any of these is less than zero.
On the departure board the flight was referred to by a carrier other than the one we bought the tickets from, because of course everyone should know every carrier’s partner airlines and how their flight numbers map.
Three hours of delay had arrived but the plane was finally at the gate. FAA says I’m entitled to a meal for the delay, so I go ask how to redeem it. I’m told to go back to customer service near security and stand in a line to get a voucher. But if I miss the flight, there’s nothing they can do about it. I’m sure that’s not how that’s supposed to work, but I’m several hours delayed already, my plans for the day are shot, missing the flight it really an option just so I can get some airport food.
The time has arrived to start boarding. I’m on chat complaining about the service when it disconnects. The app stops working, so I check the airline’s website, and get a hard down, unstyled error message. I tell my wife that something seems wrong with their site and have my suspicion confirmed a few minutes later that their entire system is down and all flights are halted until further notice. No ETA.
At this point Reddit has more information about what’s happening than the gate agent. It’s another 45 minutes before a mumbly PA announcement tells us flights are delayed due to a global system wide outage.
Fortunately, their IT staff seemed to be on it, and the whole thing only lasted an hour. Then they put us on the plane like nothing happened and even got people to cheer for the crap service. Ice water in hell, I suppose.
I feel like there is a lot more to the fungibility of planes. E.g. add just one more consideration, like bag loading, to the scenario and suddenly you end up with a mess of not great answers for a whole complex tree of things unless you somehow know with certainty how long the fix is actually going to take ahead of time. The more of these additional considerations you add, the more they start interacting with each other and the less likely "just switch the planes" only means passing the delay along.
What about hotel reservations, or literally any other thing you book ahead of time.
If a bus is taken out of service the people who were waiting for that stop at that time don’t go to the back of the line, they get the next bus. I’m sure airlines feel they are more sophisticated than public transit, but as a passenger I see little difference.
If you look at it just from a cost perspective, then you’re absolutely right. And that’s why everything sucks. If you look at it from a human perspective and design around customer service the end result would be different.
It's a bunch of baloney.
Did you know that for train and bus travel in the UK bags are not scanned? And we don't have people bombing trains and buses all the time.
Some museums look in bags and some don't and I'm not sure there's a statistically significant difference in how frequently they get bombed.
Its not just about bombs.
It's much simpler; the incoming plane takes pretty much any available gate, because they are all almost always full.
Getting the two flights to Vienna in the same spot might mean an hour of extra waiting on the tarmac for a gate to open up.
I don't think this is that uncommon, so I've only ever paid attention to airline and flight number. I would recommend everyone else do the same.
Beginning to get worried and with no-one to talk to in the construction site of an airport I discovered that I needed to rotate my phone and then the extra columns appeared on their website. Yes I had tried scrolling and zooming, but in portrait it wouldn't actually render outside of the visible width.
And how ironic that is to be the case in aviation where at this point all potentially confusing radio calls pilots use have been eliminated. For example, the word "takeoff" in "clear for takeoff" is only allowed to be used in that one phrase.
The latter group are so, so happy that you addressed the former, and not them. They have successfully avoided the inconvenience and scrutiny that would prompt them to change. (Of course, between Abe and the UHC guy, taking your complaints directly to an executive also seems to be effective, if not even more so.)
It’s a customer facing role where the main responsibility is directing confused and anxious people.
Make things better for people before they get that bad, and you won't have to read such "gross parentheticals" (or worse).
1) I am extremely skeptical that Thompson’s public murder caused any lasting pro-consumer policy changes whatsoever. Luigi being sent to prison for decades will be the final nail in the coffin there, as it should be. I honestly can’t wait to see him locked up and forgotten about.
2) Even if there were any lasting positive changes, what I find gross is the way people refer to this event, as evidenced by both of your comments. The tone is always on a spectrum of cavalier to downright gleeful in a cowardly way: “I don’t condone it, of course, but healthcare companies shouldn’t deny claims if they don’t want their executives to get shot in the back on the street!”
No, you clearly DO condone it, because you disapprove of the health insurance industry, but you’re too cowardly to just say that you think a father of two little kids who has a fully legal job that you disagree with deserves to be publicly executed by a disturbed vigilante.
So yeah, fucking gross.
1) Luigi is already a folk hero*, and the people whose boots you nibble are probably thanking their lucky stars that you're not the one sentencing him, as anyone with a brain will want to avoid decades of a "Free Huey"-style circus.
2) Does it occur to you that maybe I was intentionally speaking euphemistically, for your benefit?
Right, then. Let me be frank. We just buried a family member who died after 2 decades of his family fighting futilely to claw the treatment he needed out of the crapsack system that Brian Thompson helped preside over from his figurative cartel board seat. Many others - including myself - deal with chronic issues that are treatable or preventable in functioning healthcare systems. Unfortunately, ours is one in which Brian's buddies hold sway, and they've made it clear that their profits sit above all else (including, evidently, his own life, let alone ours).
Now, there is a world where I do not care about Brian Thompson. Where he's a teacher, or a firefighter, or an accountant, and I have no reason to know his name, and in August 2026, he is alive and living happily with his wife and children. It might even be a world where my family member, and thousands of other people, are still alive, because Brian Thompson did not take a job as a CEO of a health insurer.
We don't live in that world. We live in the one where Brian Thompson presided over a corporate regime that callously pen-stroked the deaths of thousands and thousands of patients who couldn't get the care that they needed, where HE CHOSE to be that kind of person with that kind of power and that kind of bloody track record. And the one where his successor stood over his grave and gloated about the double-industry-standard care denial rate UHC boasted under his tenure.
But also the one where rival Anthem dropped its planned anesthesia cap days after his death, and where the industry as a whole dropped its decades-long opposition to certain prior authorization reform provisions in the following year. And the one where talking heads got on TV to make sure us commonfolk knew that Luigi had done a very bad thing which they didn't approve of, indicating that our elite were feeling a real and manifest sense of danger, which your comments show continues to this day. In short, Thompson's assassination (and/or the public sentiment it unleashed) absolutely resulted in concrete and lasting change. There is zero doubt.
So, do I think that fabulously wealthy and well-connected executives should be held to account when they make reckless and cynical decisions that ruin and end lives? Do I think that this accountability makes the world a better place? Do I condone vigilante violence against such people when the government consistently refuses to investigate them, put them on trial, and put them in jail - and when the people themselves are made well-aware of the devastation their singularly influential actions have, and still they refuse to change, despite ample opportunity? Do I hope that this violence is targeted, with no collateral, and a limited-time deal because it forces sociopolitical change?
Uh.
Yeah.
At least, as much as we (we!) might condone the same for any other tyrant or despot. If you didn't cry for, I dunno, Gaddafi (fully legal position!), why cry for Thompson? And I notice you didn't say anything about Abe. You know, assassinated in broad daylight for allegations of misconduct that turned out to be true and, while legal, repugnant to much of the public? His was quite close to Thompson's situation, and you didn't even care enough to talk about or try to rebut my take on his case.
So I don't think your stand is principled. You don't care about denouncing an ontological evil, because you're supporting one. And I think the real reason that you're seething is because one of the implicit boons of wealth in America is supposed to be virtual immunity from being held accountable by people "below" you, and this incident shatters that illusion, and you really don't like it. It's merely selfishness on your part - if you want to talk about gross things and gross people.
But show me I'm wrong. Shed a tear for Mr. Pan-African Union and Mr. Moonie. Maybe throw in Kirk (or, if you're on the other side of the aisle, Hortman, though this is largely rhetorical as I can't imagine the kind of person you'd have to be not to see her death as horrific). In detail, please. And tell me what I should say to my family when they don't shed any for the woes of the suits who didn't care while our son/brother/nephew/uncle/cousin suffered. (I'll warn you that you'll have to be exceedingly eloquent in these regards in order to move the needle. Might as well not bother. Your energy is better spent helping to shape a world where simple broad prosperity and a functional social state precludes schadenfreude birthed from kinetic diplomacy, and accordingly you don't have to try to gaslight people out of it.)
*https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Picture...
Regardless, I hope you find some peace and a healthier set of ethics.
And good luck when he gets sentenced to decades behind bars, as he should. I’m sure that’ll be a rough day for the Redditors and their revenge fantasies.
>Regardless, I hope you find [...] a healthier set of ethics
That's my line.
Suffice it to say that you're not engaging with the comment because you can't. I at least appreciate your tacit acknowledgement that trying to do so while carrying through your selfish and irrational sentiments would be mutually exclusive with being a good person.
The security opens into a narrow space with a 100 people trying to put on their belts and shoes while acres of real estate is wasted on empty Hermes, Gucci stores.
While I find British people generally pleasant to talk to, the ones at Heathrow feel like they're jail wardens.
https://travelupdate.com/business-class-seat-selection-fee/
Wanna sit with your partner? Both of you, pay up! Lounge access? Oh, that's extra now.
Don’t care about who you sit next to? Have a discount!
Suppose you operate an airline, and your costs increase (e.g. fuel, labor, etc). Your options are to divide the increase equally by number of seats, or you increase price differently based on customer’s ability and willingness to pay.
I do not see what is “wrong” about the latter. In fact, the latter would allow maintaining more access to air travel for those who can afford it the least.
I don’t care for airport lounges, why should I pay for them? Same for bigger seats, or checked bags, or alcoholic drinks, etc.
Because the "sticker" price is prominently advertised, so advertising a lower price than nickel-and-diming up leaves a sour taste in people's mouths rather than advertising a higher price then offering a discount, even if the final prices are the same. Of course, everyone shops for flights on comparison websites, so their only metric is that sticker price, and airlines have to engage in this sort of stuff to be competitive.
Imagine if they charged extra for seat belts, or getting help evacuating after a crash. Some people would be willing to take the extra risk in exchange for paying less. You let more people access air travel. People who value safety can pay extra for more of it. There would be rightful outrage.
Something like lounge access is firmly in the realm of reasonable price discrimination. Charge extra, certainly! But something like charging extra to sit with your travel companions is bullshit. That sort of thing should be strongly rejected.
Why? This isn't happening, and I can't figure out how it is productive to make up a scenario.
>But something like charging extra to sit with your travel companions is bullshit. That sort of thing should be strongly rejected.
Suppose a plane has seats in groups of 3s, and everyone on the plane is in a group of even number of people. Obviously, seating everyone together is impossible. As a seller, why is it "bullshit" to give the people that do not get to sit with their companion a lower price?
Airlines are looking at standing seats (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_seat), which would absolutely impact evacuation safety (mainly a concern of bandwidth through the aisle/doors) to save some ticket costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/mar/05/ryanair-toi...
> Obviously, seating everyone together is impossible.
We manage it just fine at the movie theater, at sports stadiums, etc.
Sometimes you're one row behind. Sometimes the last person to book is in a weird spot. But largely, if you want to sit with your spouse, you'll be able to.
At a certain point, the bean counters have to be told no.
>Ryanair threatened to make people pay for toilet usage.
Ryanair says a lot of crap as part of their advertising strategy. It is ragebait/clickbait/etc. Eitherway, it's on the government to enforce basic standards.
>At a certain point, the bean counters have to be told no.
The government should ensure minimum standards (and sufficient competition in the market). Everything else, let the customers decide what they want or do not want to pay for.
"Other people are also enshittifying" is not the argument you think it to be. (It's not the case in my area, incidentally.)
You asserted it couldn't be done. I quote:
> Obviously, seating everyone together is impossible.
I'm pretty sure everyone agrees with this statement. The disagreement is what "minimum standards" should consist of.
Currently, the US's minimum standards include giving everybody seat belts, but not ensuring that children are seated with their parents. That, to me, is very much not the right place to draw the line.
But they can, and will, always stretch this further than it should go.
It's like a restaurant that charges you extra for cutlery. Some cultures eat with their hands, and probably plenty of people would take a discount to do so. But it ruins the experience in the long term, and then the industry demands a bailout and we all get to pay more taxes for a shitty experience so they can buy back shares to boost the stock.
Eventually "basic economy" becomes a single iron maiden at the back of the plane used to punish the lowest-paying passenger for not knowing about its existence.
That is just an opinion. For example:
>It's like a restaurant that charges you extra for cutlery. Some cultures eat with their hands, and probably plenty of people would take a discount to do so. But it ruins the experience in the long term
My parents and family come from a culture that almost exclusively eats with their hands. It is so important to them that they actually say they do not feel like they have eaten unless they eat with their hands.
>and then the industry demands a bailout and we all get to pay more taxes for a shitty experience so they can buy back shares to boost the stock.
This is a separate topic about politics, not about the "right" or "wrong" nature of a business choosing how to price discriminate.
>Eventually "basic economy" becomes a single iron maiden at the back of the plane used to punish the lowest-paying passenger for not knowing about its existence.
Not according to any flight I have been on. I don't see the point of feeling outrage at something that hasn't happened. In my experience, basic economy is still just as clean and safe of a seat as the others, you get on the plane, sit down, and put headphones on or read a book or go to sleep. If they let me pay a lower price for that, great!
Are we just learning about future tense?
> In my experience, basic economy is still just as clean and safe of a seat as the others...
They are meaningfully less safe.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8412040/
"Economy class syndrome refers to the occurrence of thrombotic events during long-haul flights, mainly in economy class passengers."
I don’t need meals for domestic flights, and it’s trivial for me to pack a little something. Noise canceling earphones and ipads/laptops/phones make entertaining oneself trivial.
There is even wifi now, and messaging is free so you can be in constant communication with your friends/family, especially to coordinate pickup.
The planes themselves are better (except maybe if you are a big person). But price per hour of flight time for me has stayed below inflation, so I assume the extra seats helps offset that for me.
I can buy flights anywhere, anytime on my electronic devices, have the boarding passes on my watch or phone or paper, and I can get push notifications about all flights so pickups/dropoffs are simple. I can even see the status of the plane’s previous flight so I get even more of a heads up about delays. There is also luggage tracking available now, at least with airtags if not from the airline itself.
In the early 1990s, my girlfriend was scared of flying. I went with her to the gate for emotional support. I also sometimes met people when they arrived at the gate. No longer, at least, not without some planning.
In the early 1990s, full names and id checks were not required. This made for an active resale market which has since disappeared, with the profit going to the airliners. My mother and I share the same first initial, which proved personally useful one time when we booked the ticket as "E. Smith" since we weren't sure which of us was going make the trip. No longer.
In the 1990s, from drop-off to gate in the small city I lived was about 5 minutes, for carry-on. Check-in at the gate by showing the ticket. The only inspection was for guns. I regularly carried a pocket knife back then, even on planes. No longer.
In the early 2000s I traveled international. My carry-on at times included bottles of beer (to share with people in Europe) and wine (returning from South Africa), since I thought that would be safer than in my luggage. I bought them in regular stores. No longer.
Around 2008 I made the mistake once of returning international via SFO to visit friends there. I knew where they lived - I've driven there many times. But I didn't know their zip, only their street address, and there was no way for me to check in the new automated kiosk without that vital piece of useless information. I was able to look it up, but I was flustered and in panic that I would miss the flight.
Back in the 1990s, as US citizen I could just show up in most countries, with only my passport - no visa, no fingerprinting, no automated facial recognition, and no "electronic system for travel authorization" or rather its foreign equivalents.
It even worked the other way. I had friends of mine from South Africa going to Canada for a conference, with a transfer in the US. They didn't know they were supposed to get a US visa even though they didn't leave the airport. But the US at the time did have the TWOV (Transit Without Visa) program, which meant they were able to get to the conference and back home. They even had a comfortable TWOV room at the airport, and an escort for those who needed to step outside for a smoke. The TWOV program was suspended in 2003 and has not been restored.
Air travel in the 1990s felt like freedom. Now it feels like a key part of modern government security and control, with little leeway for humanity.
I am a pleb and say this btw.
Low cost economy was a mistake and shouldn’t exist. Half of all people shouldn’t be flying.
How about AA using the same flight number for an arriving flight and a departing flight within 30 minutes of each other?
https://ktar.com/arizona-news/two-american-airlines-flights-...
It's all so organized and simple and zero need to rush. They even have signs in all major languages, it's nuts!
Source: SF, Miami, New York, Bolivia, Argentina, Texas - all kind of the same all over. Like visiting different Wawa's.
I started using Flighty app. This is way more reliable than any airport announcement and monitors.
I went to see a gate agent because I had a question. Right after yelling at someone else for the same reason, they told me "No, you have to use the kiosks."
By the time I got to the check-in kiosks I figured it out. Maybe they worked for some people but it had to be like 20% at best. Everyone else had to have help, myself included. It wouldn't scan my passport for the first 5 attempts, and then it wouldnt print my bag tag so I had to see the agent anyways.
What is the purpose of an automated system that drives everyone to the manual system? It just added an extra step.
Sorry for venting.
There's a of implicit knowledge in that environment.
I think about this a lot when I fly through an "international" airport back home where most of the signs are in English/Spanish, and how intimidating it must be for non-speakers to navigate through the airport.
https://www.grandin.com/references/thinking.animals.html
random example of the kinds of things she's good at:
https://www.grandin.com/design/curved.handling.facilities.ht...
reading her website is sort of amazing:
I had so much confusion on the entire protocols on what is allowed and what is not and all those terminologies, such that a week before travel, I had my friend do a full end-to-end guide on everything we must do since entering an airport to coming out of it.
Even then when I visited it, it was a little different than what my friend told me. But thankfully it is not a rushy airport, so I frankly told my situation to the person issuing boarding pass and he told me in detailed manner everything (my biggest confusion was with luggages).
Unlike a bus or train which you can at the worst case run through and board, for airplanes, you need to go through a lot of checkings and phew...
When in flight, there were a few instructions, messages from pilot etc. However they spoke so fast that it was so unclear. The passangers around me were also talking a little loudly, so I couldn't understand anything.
May be from what I understand, these instructions are so regular, so people who frequent flights find it boring.
For me it was both curiosity and feae of missing important details. And since it was India, they said the instructions in both English and Hindi only (I know only a little Hindi), even though the flights were for different language speaking region.
At the end, it somehow ended up fine. But I think if it were my parents in my place, the journey could have been a nightmare :)
Nowadays, if I can take a train, I take the train. At least where I live, the train stations are almost always in the city, very well-connected, are more comfortable, you can arrive very late at the train station since there is no gate, no security, no bullshit. And even if the trip is 3-4h longer with a train, you can make up for it by not having to show up minimum 1 hour early at the airport, then having to wait 1 hour for a slow bus that takes you from the airport to the actual city center, or take a taxi and give them all your life savings.
Bad call-out to Heathrow though where they’re amongst the best in the world at this.
This not the only story, there are many stories, like the one time they politely asked me to keep my bag at the front door of the airplane because there’s no enough space (I found inside people with three pieces tho), silly me I thought I will take it when I leave only to find they checked it, and the rest of the trip I was left with nothing but my passport (luckily I had it with me or I will be stranded), only to find some of my stuff got stolen from my bag and a broken laptop.
The first story however is the symbolization of the infamous Canadian bureaucracy in anything government wise, what something could be solved in one step quickly, gets convoluted with so many steps because who ever designed them is either out of touch of reality and needs to touch some grass, or just straight up moron, the same applies for hospitals ER btw, it’s not “short staff” as they claim, it’s just a poor process design.
All of this is true, and no matter how much you do it, it's still all true.
I can't even keep track of what I'm supposed to do at my own home airport that I've been to thousands of times. Some people know me on a first name basis there, and still act judgmental when something was (seemingly randomly) changed and I don't know about it.
TSA is by far the worst in the USA though. Their expectation that you do exactly what you should, without telling you what to do, while constantly changing the rules, is infuriating. Often there'll be 2-3 lines and DESPITE HAVING THE SAME SCANNERS, they'll have different unspoken rules that you are literally yelled at over.
Of course, this is baby/bathwater territory as only a fraction of a percentage of people are up to no good, and of those only a percentage is a danger to others.
Railways aren't much better. German railways are bad enough, but Eastern Europe... good luck even finding a realtime track schedule, and screw you if you don't speak the language. Last time in Rijeka there was construction going on but no indications anywhere, my fellow travellers were lucky I spoke Croatian and recognized that the attendant was shouting in Croatian for the people on what should have been a train...
German service providers absolutely don't care if you don't speak German and will take that extra step to make sure you get the message.
I speak the language. The thing I'm annoyed is is that tourist destinations should be better prepared for, well, tourists showing up!
The issue at the root of it is that Croatia wants to diversify from tourism and agriculture, its main sources of income... but for that, it needs money. With Russia invading Ukraine, a ton of Russian tourists went missing (if you ask me: thank God), and so the remaining ones are getting fleeced for all they're worth.
The side effect is that the locals are getting shafted. Supermarket prices are at German levels (on the islands it's even worse)... the only thing saving most locals is that Croats tend to outright own their homes and a lot of Croats have houses large enough for two families if not more. That makes high cost of living a lot more bearable.
And the fact that the geography makes supplying the coastal areas very inefficient doesn't help either. Along the coast from Rijeka all the way down to Zadar there is only the one single-lane long magistrala with only a few passthroughs through the mountain and the recently constructed highways... but no train, it's only in Rijeka and Zadar again. And with the exception of Krk which is connected by bridge, all of the islands have to be supplied by ferry, but the trucks that haul all the goods have to wait sometimes for hours to get on the ferry, the only fast lane is for the public transit buses and authorities.
It also doesn't help when so many countries (and even cities) have totally different systems for paying, etc. Contactless payment is simplifying some of that. But you still, for example, have the need to tap out in some places but not others. And, no, having to scour guidebooks (of possibly outdated info), for all the right incantations for a given locale isn't really satisfactory.
The tapping out thing can be so confusing, even as someone that uses transit a lot. I was traveling recently and encountered buses where you had to tap in only, ones you had to tap in and out on, and ones where you had to tell the driver where you were going before tapping in. None of which had clear signage on the bus itself.
Even with my home system, at the airport I noticed they had installed extra stickers covering up the wrong way gates, and I had to tell someone where to tap their tickets when their entire family was blocking my way to the platform when trying to get home.
My observation is that's improved a lot in some cases. But I remember I was traveling somewhare on UK trains, and between receipts and tickets for trains after a change, I had this sheaf of cards that my friend and I were rifling through to get on a train (with a short connection) and it wasn't at all obvious what we needed to feed into the turnstyle with people getting annoyed behind us.
100% disagree.
> When we try to find gate B45, we encounter the following sign:
(see board with 2 B45 gates)
Well, yes. This is wrong. And confusing. But mostly wrong
1. Use ChatGPT (or similar) to make a fun and attractive greetings card image that is a farcical representation of the situation.
2. Use MoonPig.com (or similar) to send it through the real/royal mail to someone important (but not the CEO) at the company that has annoyed you.
This need not cost more than $6. That's almost certainly less than 1% the cost of the long haul flight that this happened on.
Everything you describe is likely a function of the CFO being allowed to treat the savings they can find as if they are a profit centre. It is incumbent upon those of us that can see a better way to demonstrate that the 5p per flight that the CFO optimised annoyed some customers enough to spend real time bringing it to someone's attention.
The first time I did this I effectively received over $2,000 from my airline of choice (though the path to that was convoluted). Most people don't react well to being told they are wrong. Use your intellect and industry to show them a better way in a positive and friendly way.
You will usually get better results and by spreading more positivity in the world will likely feel happier too.