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Sunday, January 2, 2011

No Class Passengers in the First Class Cabin

I ventured back east to spend Christmas with the family last week and while the time at home was great, the transit there and back, not so much. A kind and generous elf was nice enough to transfer miles to my ticket so I could fly first class. Now, I'm not whining about the free upgrade and the convenience didn't go unappreciated but by the last leg of the journey I cared less about the legroom and more about the clientele in the cabin.

West Coast to East Coast: The flight out had the wanna-be hot shot that wouldn't get off his phone. Excuse me sir, but this cabin is in fact NOT a conference room. No one is interested in discussing your profit margins and we certainly do not need to know about forecasts for the next quarter. You're on a plane, it's closed quarters. Have the common courtesy to save it for after we land. We have all been shoved, pushed, bumped, frisked, looked over and shoved some more before making it onto this death box. I've removed my shoes, my watch and my laptop, paid double the price for a lousy cup of coffee and all I really want to do is pass out, hopefully for the duration of this flight. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the over-privileged couple in the seat ahead of me and their rat of a dog. Apparently domestic first class was sub-standard and there wasn't enough room for FiFi in the seat underneath. God help us if these people ever encounter a real problem in their self centered lives. Still, I would have billed the trip as a success had it not been for the return.

East Coast to West Coast: Normally, I like the idea of managing to pull off a somewhat current style of fashion. And I was even..almost... just a teensy bit smug and a little bit satisfied, I won't lie, about dancing across the red carpet (it's small but yes they have one) in my newly purchased Cole Haan boots and hopping into that first class seat. Row 1, Seat A. As it turned out, had I donned manure stained Timberlands, a happier traveler I would have been. Then, perhaps the wretch of a woman sitting next to me might have given me a brief once over, caught a whiff of "country air" and dismissed me as a dairy farming lesbian. As it was she took a big ole dumb blond leap to the conclusion that my first class seat and my clothing filed me under the same type of soulless spoiled rotten spawn she must have sprang from. In 3 seconds flat she decided we'd be best friends and I should know and idolize her entire life story. After 45 minutes of her daddy's BMW, her BMW and her foolish sister who married a "poor man" (her EXACT words, repeated ad nauseam) I was ready to take that chilled silverware the stewardess passed me and jam it in my eye socket. She guzzled one too many glasses of wine and passed out in my lap still babbling something about how jealous people were of us. Literally IN MY LAP. I spent the next 3 hours alternating shoving her off me and pretending to be asleep during her intermittent bouts of consciousness when she tried to pick up the conversation where it left off. I've never de-boarded a plane faster.

Back and forth across this country has it's ups and downs. It's always worth the headache but I think for the foreseeable future I'll be out here on the west coast... in a car.