When you travel, there are certain acts of etiquette most people take part in. You wait your turn in the bathroom queue (but if you really have to go, it’s OK to ask if you can go ahead of people. It may or may not work). You go on the plane when your group is called. The middle seat gets both arm rests (them’s the rules! LOLOL!).
But the other day, I discovered a story about a woman complaining about a fellow passenger “cutting the line,” and I don’t think it should have been considered a problem.
Miss Manners, penned by Judith Martin, has been running in over 200 newspapers across the country since 1978. Much like Dear Abby, Ask Amy, etc, she answers readers’ questions/problems with her own brand of sage advice. However, unlike Dear Abby and Ask Amy, her specialty is etiquette and manners. So Miss Manners will answer questions about chatty plane passengers who talk over the stranger sitting next to them, lane hogs at a hotel swimming pool, etc.
A couple of months ago, Miss Manners posted a letter she got from a person who had been yelled at for cutting the line at the airport:
Miss Manners: I was scolded for cutting the line at the airport
There were travelers behind me. I grabbed an empty bin, walked around her and began filling it. She completed loading her bin and brought it around in front of me, immediately in front of the scanner to run through. I would not have noted any of this except that, as we picked up our bins post-scanner, the traveler turned to me and noted that I had rudely cut in front. With several additional critical comments, she got her displeasure off her chest.
I had several responses in mind, but simply wished her safe travels. I have had a bit of esprit de l’escalier, but also some reflection. Who, in your opinion, was the impolite party? For my part, I think this traveler committed two etiquette gaffes, but I have certainly been wrong before.
Even had she not known how you (politely and correctly) resolved the situation, Miss Manners would have concluded — from your charging that person with only two rudenesses — that you value civil coexistence. She thanks you for that rare restraint.
In your place, your fellow traveler, who is evidently stockpiling indignities, would no doubt have filed separate charges for each specific insult — without waiting to think of them on the staircase. A polite traveler who needed extra time to hoist everything up onto the belt should simultaneously, and explicitly, invite those in line behind to proceed.
I am 100% with Miss Manners on this one. If you’re particularly slow at doing something and there’s a line behind you, you let people go ahead of you. I do that all the time—walking up stairs or incline, I tend to slow down so I don’t lose my breath so quickly (I have exercise-induced asthma). I always tell people to go ahead of me, “…cuz I’m slow.”
When Joe and I were flying out of MCO’s Terminal C a couple of months ago, there was a young family in front of us on the PreCheck lane. It was the 2 parents and 4 boys. The oldest was maybe 5 or 6. The twins were toddlers – 2ish? And the baby was less than a year old. So they had 2 strollers to empty out, along with all their carry-on stuff, on top of the twins running around. It took them FOREVER to get through PreCheck. While they were getting ready to go through, all they had to do was say, “You go ahead.” They didn’t. But we just waited for them. Good thing we got to the airport early.
What do you think?
What do you think of the question Miss Manners answers – did they cut the line? Or was passenger #1 just a grump?
Feature Image: Port of Seattle
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