This is the topper of people and companies that piss me off this week. I got on a United flight from Philly to Lax on Monday and the plane was just about loaded and ready to take off. The flight attendant stops at my row and looks in the overhead bin at the bags. They’re all arranged perfectly, but she starts asking in the bitchiest possible voice “Whose gray bag is this?” She asks like 4 times and nobody is answering her. I’m perplexed, since the bags are all perfectly arranged and wondering how she singled out that bag. She then starts saying “If nobody claims this bag, I’m going to gate check it.” The guy next to me finally points to an older man across the aisle and one row up and says he thinks it’s that guy’s. We’re looking at each other asking what the deal might be.

When the older guy says that yes, it’s his bag, she shifts into her next phase of drama. “Well, that bag you re-arranged to put yours up there is mine, and it doesn’t work that way. You don’t touch my bag.” She takes his bag out, leaving a gaping space because there’s plenty of room for all the bags, and walks to the front of the plane. About 15 rows up she throws it in the overhead. In the meantime, she has no idea that a good 12 people are laughing at her, and asking each other why it is that the paying customer doesn’t get to keep his bag where it fits. It wasn’t crushing her bag, it was barely even touching it. But out of principle because he re-positioned her bag, she took his and moved it as far forward as possible.

While it’s obvious the airline industry doesn’t care much for it’s customers, there’s got to be a marketer / PR person / customer service manager somewhere at United who’s got to care just a little bit about their existence and the damage that an employee like this does to their brand, making them work that much harder when they deal with consumers that already hate them. It had nothing to do with me, and I was pissed about it the whole flight. Of those 12 people laughing at her, all of them will tell this story, I probably already did 4 or 5 times before I even put it on here. Maybe it was the same flight attendant from this flight…