Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck (23 page)

Sprite does not stain, and your pants will dry, but few people would find you unreasonable if you not only were extremely peeved at the Sprite spiller but told her to cut it the hell out. But if you so much as admit to being irritated at riders who continuously spill a trickle of their music into your ears—that angry-mosquitoes sound of leaky headphones—you’re likely to get sneered at by many who share the sentiments of a commenter on a
New York Times
blog-rant on iPod volume by reporter Ray Rivera:

I hear rent is dirt cheap in Idaho, move your complaining behind over there and go complain to a potato.

—Jason

The truth is, no matter where you are, other people’s attention doesn’t belong to you. This is especially important to remember in a contained shared space like a bus or subway car, where people often can’t get away from the persistent annoyance of leaky headphones (or obnoxiously loud conversations) except by getting off before their stop and walking forty blocks. Talking at a polite volume takes recognizing that all those strangers are riding the bus with you because they need to get somewhere, not because they want an update on you and your day. Listening to music politely might mean spending more than $3 on headphones and getting a friend to tell you whether they’re leaking sound. Using your cell phone politely means only using it for texting on public transportation or in any contained space rather than following “norms” set by the self-important who force a busful or trainful of strangers to listen to their phone conversations. And be sure to turn off the sound on your phone so the world will not—
bing!
—be apprised every time you get a voicemail or—
clickety-clickety!
—spell a word. Putting one’s device on silent is also a huge must for riders playing games on their devices sans headphones, the noise polluters the rest of us most long to tase and watch writhing in agony on the spit-, gum-, and urine-spattered train car floor.

As for whether you should say something to public transit noise polluters, it depends. If you’re endlessly asking noisy jerks to put a damper on it, you’ll spend your whole commute being a scold and probably annoy other passengers in the process—perhaps more so than the noise polluter already was. Also, although some people just don’t realize that they’re being noisy and will respond apologetically and even gratefully when you let them know, many absolutely know they’re rude but would lick the subway car from end to end before admitting to it. So, if you’re sensitive to noise pollution, it’s probably best to take proactive defensive steps, like wearing what I call “asshole-canceling headphones” (or, as they’re more commonly known,
noise-canceling
). The top-of-the-line models with the big, ugly over-the-ear cans (like the Bose QuietComfort 15s my boyfriend got me) are expensive, but they’re worth every cent, as they do a remarkable job of quieting or even muting noise entirely.
³⁸

But say you’ve left your defensive measures at home and you’re stuck on a long commute with somebody leaking
Angry Birds
or inane pop the whole way. As I’ve noted elsewhere in the book, telling a stranger what to do can be very effective … if your desired effect is having them keep doing what they were doing, only louder or otherwise more bothersomely—after they get done yelling at you about what a stupid, ugly, meddling bitch you are.

For more effective effectiveness, take the no-blaming/“just the facts, ma’am” approach I suggest for getting smokers, loud cellphoners, and drivers parked outside your house with booming car stereos to stop bothering you. Smile, get the attention of the person with the leaky headphones, and tell them, “You probably didn’t know this, but your earbuds leak quite a bit of sound.” You aren’t giving them orders; you’re simply pointing out a helpful fact. You aren’t suggesting that they’re rude, just temporarily unaware. If they care at all about being considerate or at least being perceived as considerate, you’ve just put them in the best possible mind-set to voluntarily turn their device off or at least turn the music down.

Hey, Seathogs: Did your purse pay a fare, too? Did your penisaurus?

If your penis is so huge that you are forced to spread your knees and take over half the space of the people on both sides of you, you aren’t well-endowed; you have a frightening medical condition in need of immediate attention.
³⁹
SeatHogs.com
calls this space invasion “mansitting” (though women occasionally do it, too) and scorns the “selfish or clueless individual who deprives another individual of any reasonable or unimpeded opportunity to sit down.”

Accordingly, no, your purse or backpack doesn’t get its own seat on the train or bus—not even if it isn’t terribly crowded. Someone may want that seat, and turning it into a throne for your bag forces that rider to have an interaction with you in order to sit there. This isn’t to say it’s impossible to keep strangers at bay and have an entire bank of seats to yourself. Just hire Jeeves to drive you around in a Bentley.

If somebody seated has given their bag or their hat a seat of its own, avoid showing anger. Using a calm tone, just point to the item and say, “Excuse me?” They will know exactly what you mean and should move it—perhaps grudgingly—which marks them as even more of a jerk than they already were by giving their hat its own seat.

I’ve even had success getting those subway leg-spreaders to stop invading my space. I pull my bookmark from my book and prod their knee in the direction I want it to go, sometimes chirping “Excuse me!” while prodding. You could also just ask them to move their knees. (They probably count on most people being too uncomfortable or too scared to say anything to a stranger.) Again, attitude is important. If you don’t come on all bitchy and aggressive, they’re less likely to get angry back, and it would probably seem embarrassing to try to kill you.

THE AIRPLANE

Flying with old-fashioned manners—like from the 1950s, not from when the Neanderthals were running around.

It’s seriously cool that a whole bunch of people can get into a big metal tube in Los Angeles, hurtle through the sky, and be in New York five or six hours later. We’re all so used to airplane travel that we mostly forget to be amazed by it. Of course, these days, we’re sometimes just too angry to be amazed by it. Just getting through the airport to the gate is an ugly ordeal, thanks to the “security theater,”
⁴⁰
security expert Bruce Schneier’s term for our wildly wasteful and idiotic pretend security that treats every American with a plane ticket as a plausible suspect.

In 2010, I was flying home from Toronto (where you go through American security), and the TSA supervisor at the X-ray machine told me I was “lucky” that he wasn’t going to take away my dull little drugstore tweezers. Take away my tweezers? Because I might use them to break in to the cockpit and overpluck the pilot’s eyebrows?
⁴¹

In 2011, a female TSA worker’s lawyer (unsuccessfully)
⁴²
demanded $500,000 from me after I dared complain on my blog that her client had jabbed the side of her latex-gloved hand—four times—up somewhere you don’t get to go unless you at least buy me a drink and tell me I’m pretty. My stay-at-home-mom neighbor, pulled aside for a TSA “pat-down” at LAX, got felt up almost to the point of nipple play. It was so intimate she felt compelled to explain to her TSA groper, “They’re a little lumpy because I’m still breast-feeding.”

Beyond all the “security” indignities, people are fatter than ever, seats are smaller than ever, and airlines are stopping just short of charging for use of the restroom in flight. Airplane travel increasingly feels like a cross between factory farming (from the chicken’s perspective) and being thrown into an airborne Turkish prison.
⁴³
But, don’t despair. It’s still possible to take a flight that isn’t hellish—and maybe even one that’s pleasant—even if you can’t afford an $8,000 first-class ticket or a working time machine to take you back to the days before Pan Am went out of business. As you’ll come to see, a pleasant flight has three elements: one part luck, one part polite behavior by us, and one part knowing how to play it upon encountering some airborne unrepentant boor.

Baggage manners: Buying an airplane ticket does not entitle a person to challenge the laws of physics.

Because most airlines are now charging to check bags, some have gotten very strict about the size of your carry-on. Or, so I hear. Whenever I fly, the gate and flight attendants all seem to turn their backs on any rollaboard smaller than a sarcophagus. Sure, it sucks to pay $25 or $30 to check a suitcase, but whether or not the flight attendants stop you, there’s carry-on baggage and then there’s douchebaggage: coming aboard with two huge wheeliebags and a bulging backpack and making room for them by asking three other passengers to pull their reasonably sized bags out of the overhead and stick them under the seat.

It’s good to be kind and generous and
voluntarily
move stuff under your seat for some late-boarding passenger who needs space for their single, reasonable-sized bag. But, if you’ve stowed a moderate amount of stuff and then some bag-caravanning hogaboard asks to colonize your little section of overhead space (eradicating leg room you’re especially in need of if you’re tall), don’t be afraid to politely refuse. Just avoid responding to “Can you put your bag under your seat…?” with a definitive no, which will give them room to attack you as “selfish” and maybe get other passengers to take their side. Instead, deflect them with an indirect approach (in the guise of being helpful)—something like: “Actually, I paid to check
my
large rollaboard, and I think the flight attendant can help you check yours.” Remember, tone and manner count. If you don’t get angry, you’re more likely to prevail, deftly emphasizing the difference between
sharing
space and giving it up entirely.

After stowing your stuff in the overhead, your butt cheeks should meet your seat and remain there until the plane is at cruising altitude. If you have a tendency to pop up multiple times during boarding to rummage through your bag for your headphones or a stick of gum, plan ahead: While waiting at the gate, gather all the items you’ll use in flight in a small bag so you can toss it under your seat fast and maybe help that cute honeymooning couple make their connecting flight to Hawaii.

Tempting as it may be to stow your carry-on over the first seat of the plane when you’re sitting in the last one, that’s not fair to the guy in the bulkhead seat who’ll end up having to check the bag holding his laptop. Yes, tragically, you must glide your wheeled suitcase a whole fifty feet to your seat at the back of the plane and, upon landing, endure a similar Bataan Death March–like struggle to get it off.

Family planning: How to be seated with your spouse and children on a plane.

I have “motion sickness issues,” which is to say I get carsick on any street with more than five turns in it—for example, the winding mountain roads of Washington, DC—and I often feel airsick when seated anywhere on a plane but up near the front. This means that I am an advance-planning fiend when flying and that I often pay $25 to $75 extra to sit in the “premium” coach rows near the bulkhead. Should I screw up and forget to buy my ticket soon enough and get stuck near the back of the plane, I’ll sometimes end up feeling pretty crappy, but what I don’t do is try to press some other passenger to trade seats with me. Just asking them would be an imposition, as my frequently flying First Amendment lawyer, Marc J. Randazza, pointed out in a blog item about how peeved he is when he’s asked to give up his window or aisle seat and take somebody’s middle seat:

A woman (it’s always a woman) gets on the plane and sits in the middle seat next to me. She wants me to trade seats with her or her husband/child—who is in a different row, but ALSO in a middle seat. I always decline. I am never polite about it, and I damn well should not have to be. Often, I’ve paid extra for that seat. If not, I at least had my head out of my ass when making the reservation, and I took steps not to get crammed in the middle seat. So, since you were too cheap to pay the $25 for the window or aisle seat, or because you failed to plan, I’m an asshole for saying “hell no” when you want me to spend three hours in a middle seat? This is asshole behavior. I know I sound like a dick when I say “no way.” You don’t get to put me in that situation. Worse than that, you don’t get to ask until you find some poor sap who thinks he needs to be a gentleman. You fucked up. YOU sit in the middle seat. If you want to switch with an aisle or a window passenger, you had better have at least $50 to sweeten the deal. I would not accept $50 for it, but someone might. That should be the minimum charge to trade with a middle seat fool.

It
is
somewhat different if you aren’t asking somebody to switch to a substantially crappier seat. If you’re just, say, asking them to move from, say, 7D to 6D, you could ask in a way that gives them an out, like, “I realize that it might be inconvenient for you to move, but if it’s not a big deal, my husband and I would love to sit together.” Then again, if it isn’t a long flight and your husband isn’t being sent off to war when you get to your destination, maybe you can survive sitting a row or two apart. Although for some people, it might be no big deal to swap with you—and some may actually volunteer without your ever asking—others may have a bunch of belongings to move and some issues with climbing over other already-seated passengers. Keep in mind that by asking somebody to move, you’re basically saying, “I don’t know you, but I’d like to inconvenience you because it would make things better for me.” Also, many people really just want to be left alone; that is, unless the question is, “Would you mind giving up your coach seat and taking my wife’s seat in first class?”