Racial Turbulence on Southwest Flight: The wife pointed at me and told her husband loudly, “I don’t want him sitting there.”
/And I appreciate that.
First leg of the flight was from Seattle to Chicago. No problem—I get off the plane for my 4-hour layover (no, seriously) and go get an all-beef dog at Chicago O’Hare.
The second leg of my flight. Ugh.
I have a backpack and a small duffle bag. I’m in the “C” Boarding Group (again), and so I know that I’m getting a middle seat. Guaranteed. Therefore, I wait to be one of the very last people boarding. When I get on, there’s a seat in the very first row—it’s a middle seat. I know I’m going to get screwed on the seating, so I figure “Why not sit get screwed in the front seat of the plane?” At least I can get off the plane first. There was a middle-aged white couple (“Sarah Jessica Parker”-type middle aged, where they tried to dress like they weren’t quickly approaching AARP-status. Not “Wilford Brimley” middle aged) there, the man in the aisle seat holding a baby and the woman in the window seat. They were being slick (like I do as well) and had a pile of stuff in the middle seat pretending that it was occupied and hoping nobody would sit there.
I know the game—I’m not mad.
I asked, “Excuse me, is somebody sitting there?”
The lady responded, “Yes, I’m waiting for a friend. She’s supposed to be boarding.
I was pretty sure she was lying. Now under normal circumstances, I would’ve just taken the seat—this is Southwest Airlines, for God’s sake—there’s no “saving seats.” Southwest Airlines is PURE social Darwinism. Every person for themselves!! But since I wasn’t getting a good seat anyway, and I’m at the very end of the boarding group, I’ll wait. No biggie—I’m getting screwed on the seat anyway.
So I decided that I’d just wait it out, “Ok cool. I’ll wait here to see if your friend gets on.”
Nobody. Literally, the LAST person boarding—another middle-aged white woman—gets on. The lady literally grabs her and asks her to sit there. I’ll call that lady “The Recruit.”
I smirk and tell her, “You don’t know that lady at all—ha! You lied. You realize how rude that is right?”
She responded, “That’s not rude.”
I said, “Ok, well I suppose that’s just you then.” And smiled at her.
The Recruit got up QUICKLY and strolled toward the back—evidently she had zero interest in this discussion and saw more fertile ground in the back of the plane. I put my bags up above and went to sit down. The husband (I’m assuming they were married—so sue me) scooted over to the middle seat, chivalrously. No problem. Well, no problem until there was a problem.
The wife pointed at me and told her husband loudly, “I don’t want him sitting there.”
I looked at her to make sure that I heard her correctly. She said, “Don’t look at me.”
Yeah, I was pretty sure I heard her correctly. Damn, I couldn’t believe that—adrenaline rushed through me. I told her, “Look, you have no input into where I sit or where I look.” I sat back and got my MP3 player ready to play some Marty Robbins. I know the drill—I’ve been trained since I was a kid. “You’re a big brown guy—don’t be too scary. Don’t be too big. Don’t be too brown.”
We’re taught these things for our own safety and to get along.
And I was cool—but before I pressed play on my Sony MP3 player the husband—all 5’5 and probably 125 pounds told me, “You need to shut your mouth!”
WHOA!!! For a woman to tell me something rude, that’s one thing. I’m not going to clobber a woman for a rude remark. But this guy—let’s be clear, he would never talk to me like that under any other circumstances. Ever. But he was feeling bold or threatened or insecure or something and turned what were simply words into possibly a really bad situation.
...until you see him as a human being.
I got really close to him and told him, “Look, you know this plane ride is going end at some point, right? You have to get off this plane.”
At that point he shut up. He realized that those words had a different significance to me and that he put himself in jeopardy. But the wife continued, “You can’t sit there.”
By this time, I’m really mad. Admittedly. Not at the lady, necessarily, but that this grown man would talk to another grown man like this and expect no response. “I’m not moving anyplace so if you don’t want to sit by me, I suggest you move.”
Just then, the Captain comes out. I’m elated. Yes! I don’t like feeling like I have to run tell anybody anything, but I also don’t want to get thrown into jail for stomping this dude into the luggage area below the plane. So I’m happy to see an objective person. But unfortunately, that’s not how it went down.
He comes out and looks at only me. “Is there a problem?”
I wanted to tell the whole story, but I really just wanted to get to New York. So I responded, “Well, this lady right here told me that she doesn’t want me sitting here for whatever reason and her husband tells me to shut my mo-…”
The Captain interrupts me. “Well, I only hear you.”
I tell him, “I understand—I have a loud voice, that’s why I’m telling you what happened. Ask any of the folks sitting here…” I pointed around to the people staring at us. He didn’t ask anybody anything. Instead, his focus was squarely on me.
CAPTAIN: “You need to lower your voice. Do you want to take the next flight?” Admittedly, I DO have a loud voice and I WAS agitated by this time. I think that was understandable.
ME: “No, I don’t want to—I’m telling you what happened.”
CAPTAIN: “Well I only hear you out here hollering.”
ME: “Well, I suggest that you have selective hearing.”
CAPTAIN: Staring me down. “Oh now you want to get in MY face?” I was a bit confused because that implied that I had gotten in someone else’s “face” already. Maybe he meant that I got in the husband’s face that told me that I need to shut my mouth? I wasn’t sure how that worked, but I started to answer his question. He cut me off and answered for me, “I suggest you quiet down before you take the next flight.”
I was stewing. But I knew I couldn’t take the next flight—that would not have been until the next morning and I would’ve missed my very important meeting. I don’t have a lot of very important meetings—I’m not a very important guy—so I didn’t want to be late to/miss one of the only ones that I’ve had. I would’ve been sitting in a federal holding cell and the middle-aged, white couple would be laughing to wherever they were going. When I went to go get my bag at baggage claim, a couple of the younger white guys sitting immediately behind me came up to tell me (one of them was from Hicksville, Long Island. I laughed when he first told me that—I thought he was joking): “That was bullshit. I told the captain afterwards that everything happened exactly like you said. She obviously didn’t like you. I thought the captain was going to ask us some questions.”
Made the meeting. Thankfully. Made a complaint on the Southwest Airlines website. They responded with an incredibly patronizing and condescending email that said that they were sorry for my “less than pleasant” experience on the plane (it wasn’t “less than pleasant”—it was humiliating). The email also stated, as a matter of fact, “As you know, our Pilot did not hear any other Passengers, which is why he only addressed his question to you.” (No, I have absolutely no reason to know that—I do know that he only addressed me). Also, the Captain flat-out lied and said that he asked me to lower my voice twice before asking if I wanted to take another flight—that’s just not true. Finally, the email said, in ABC After-School Special speak:
We realize that sometimes it’s not what you say, but how you say it, and we apologize that you feel as if our Pilot could have used a more patient and professional tone when intervening in the exchange between you and the Customers in question.
This is just insulting: as if my problem was with the Captain’s TONE. No, it was that he didn’t ask anybody else a single question before singling me out and asking me if I wanted to take another flight and then stood staring at me as if I were supposed to stand down from his authority (which I did, by the way, because I had to make the flight. I would’ve loved to have three minutes alone with that Captain in a small room).
