Travel Tip #4: Arm Rests
by John Wilson
Always put down the arm rests.
Seriously?
In all fairness, I’m not skinny. I have to be cognizant of staying on my side of the seat and have a tendency to take up more leg room than I really should. I understand it sucks to be heavy and I get how hard it is to lose weight. Therefor, if you sit beside me on the plane, make sure you follow these rules:
I strongly suggest, before anyone sits down beside you, you immediately put the arm rests to their lowered and locked position. Here’s why:
On a recent trip back from San Diego, I got stuck in the middle seat. This is never a good thing, even if two members of the Swedish Bikini Team are on both sides. You can’t stick your feet in the aisle, and you can’t lean or look out of the window. It’s just bad.
In this case, I was stuck between a self-proclaimed “big man” coworker and a gentleman who was no less than 400 pounds. I’m not kidding, this guy was not only in his seat, the aisle, and my seat, but he was also taking up all of the leg room in my section of the “under-seat area.” It was so bad the flight attendant felt bad for me and asked me several times if I needed any extra water, a pillow, and shot me the knowing – I’m glad I’m not you – glance.
Normally, I’m a pretty easy to get along with nice guy. But seriously, this guy was 100% invading my space, no matter how many times I huffed, sighed, elbowed him, wiggled or moaned. When he wasn’t snoring loud enough that the people around me were laughing, he was bouncing his leg hard enough to cause the people in the aisle across from us shoot me dirty looks.
About two hours into the flight, I decided my only defense was to put down the arm rest and at least get him kind of off of my side. I looked down at the arm rest but there was absolutely no way I could lower it on to this guy’s leg which was nearly 50% under the arm rest. I did the only thing a self-respecting business person could do, I lied about work.
When the guy woke up and noticed me kicking his leg to get to my computer stowed beneath the seat, I said warmly, “Hey, sorry to bother you but I need to get this report done before we land. I don’t want to elbow you so I’m going to lower the arm rest.”
Scales in the terminal?
The dude literally had to move completely off the seat to give me room to put down the arm rest. When the arm rest finally reached the full down position, it was like I moved directly to First Class. I could feel my legs again, I could reach the magazine pocket and my lungs could fully expand.
The guy got mad.
To rub it in, I powered up my computer, opened a Word document, sighed a big loud sigh, closed the laptop and muttered, “I guess this can wait until my layover” closed the computer, spread out in the seat, and drifted off to a warm nap, comforted of the rhythmic leg-bouncing all the way to Atlanta.
John, Your story makes me laugh each time I hear (or read) it. I Googled your query and found that some airlines do indeed have a restriction for what Southwest Airlines calls “customers of size.” You can read more about it in an article published last fall through this URL: http://www.aviation.com/travel/080806-airlines-and-customers-of-size.html Happy travels…:-)
Great article Joy, thanks. I’m really not trying to be a jerk, I promise. But if you don’t fit in your seat…
It’s even worse at baseball games, but that’s a different article.
I agree Wilse. There is nothing worse when traveling than sitting in the middle seat. Even when I am not in the middle, I am fully cognizant of the pain that the person in the middle must endure.
That’s why I say the person in the middle has the right to BOTH armrests. True, I’ve never sat on a plane with an extremely fat person, but nonetheless, the person on the aisle can stretch out their legs and the window seat has the window to look out and the side of the plane to rest their head.
I don’t put up with shit like fatty’s reaction to you just wanting the space you paid for. For the sake of argument, let’s assume you paid the same price for the seat he did. Why should he get more square footage (a true testament to the America’s obesity problem if that is my metric for the human body) for the same amount of $.
Hope all is well in Charleston.