Your Feet Still Smell: Etiquette Update

Back in June, we shared our views on airplane etiquette, with a huge tip of the baseball cap to baseball groundskeeper and blogger Murray Cook. And speaking of etiquette, the attached photo of someone's nasty hooves on the F cabin bulkhead was taken by my colleague and co-blogger, Crosscheck, on a flight last year from SFO to LAX.

On that note, this week I made a swing that included SFO-SEA-ORD, and witnessed the following:

Violation #1
Stopping by the SFO United Club in T3, I headed back to the so-called Contemplation Room (no cell phones). There's signage that clearly says that lying down, reclining, and sleeping on the furniture are not allowed.

Not only did I have to kick out one guy who was on the phone with his tree surgeon (really), I encountered a guy lying flat out on a couch, asleep: barefoot.

Gross. Blurry photo here (I was afraid if I used the flash it would wake him up, and he'd kick my ass – he looked like an extra from Eastbound & Down). Eventually he stopped drooling and put on his shoes and shuffled off to a flight (probably to Boston).

Violation #2
A couple of days later, I boarded a UA flight from SEA to ORD, seated in F. The guy in 5A was a cross between Hulk Hogan and that dude from the custom motorcycle show, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, filthy cargo shorts, and flip-flops. Keep in mind there was an inch of snow on the ground in Seattle and the outside temp was 29 degrees Fahrenheit. And it was 19 degrees in Chicago. And the guy had no coat.

As soon as he sat down, he kicked off his sandals, and wiggled his gnarled, filthy, disgusting toes in glee. Before pushback, he got up to retrieve something from the overhead and the FA told him that "bare feet aren't allowed on board the aircraft." But she didn't make him put his flip-flops back on. And when he asked "Why aren't bare feet allowed?" her answer was:

"Because there are sharp objects on the floor."

WTF!? Wrong answer. How about,

"Because, Mr. Hillbilly, you are filthy, grimy, dirt-encrusted pig whose repulsive, exposed feet are a fungus-bearing disease vector, and you sicken us."

Folks, please keep your shoes on?

Thanks.

P. S.: As an aside, the woman in front of me on the same flight had a squalling 5 month old monster infant. In F cabin. That's a topic for another post.

Related articles

• Your feet smell, or airplane etiquette 101 (exitrowaisle.blogspot.com)
• Travel tips from a VERY frequent flyer (groundskeeper.mlblogs.com/)
• Should we have a charter for aeroplane etiquette? (telegraph.co.uk)

We Love to Pee, and It Shows

Image via WikipediaCrosscheck and I recently compared experiences getting doused with fluids in mid-flight. A woman next to her sneezed a large volume of probably illness-laden spittle onto her. For my part, a careless FA decided to pop the pull tab on a can of Heineken about 5 inches from my right temple, sending a frothy spray of Dutch lager into my eye and ear.

But we have nothing on a kid who was unlucky enough to fly a JetBlue redeye from Oregon to New York.

If you haven't heard this story yet, prepare for a doozy.

A teenage passenger on a JetBlue redeye was detained after landing because he peed on an 11-year old girl during the flight. The New York Post tells it like this:

The youngster was traveling with her sister and dad, and had been left alone for a few minutes while the others used the lavatories. Robert Vietze, 18, of South Warren, Vt., stumbled from his seat five rows behind her and emptied his bladder, a witness said.

"I was drunk, and I did not realize I was pissing on her leg..." He later claimed to have consumed eight alcoholic beverages.

Yeah, uh, OK.

There are a bunch of obvious issues here, but the thing we loved most about the initial version of the story was the phrase embedded in the URL for the NY Post story:

Creep in Jet Stream

Once we were done laughing we logged back in to Interwebs to discover that the nocturnal emitter in question was a member of the US Ski Team, now an ex-member of the US Ski Team.

Insert "US Pee Team" joke here.


To be continued, we are certain.

Related articles

• Robert 'Sandy' Vietz Thrown Off U.S. Ski Team After Allegedly Drunkenly Urinating On Girl Aboard JetBlue Flight (newyork.cbslocal.com)

Will You Fly on September 11?

While booking some travel today, it occurred to me that some people will avoid flying on 9/11/11, the tenth anniversary of the infamous hijackings.

On the other hand, my co-author Crosscheck pointed out that the inevitable heightening of security screenings might make 9/11 among the safer days for flying – from an anti-terrorism standpoint, anyway.


Are you flying on 9/11? Or are you avoiding it?