How to Be a Hypocrite OR Yesterday in Tweets [Philosophical Monday]

10AM: Right before getting on the first leg of my flight to Chicago (ORD)

Finally giving the revamped @ebonymag a read on the flight back LA. Let’s see…

EBONY turned out to be pretty good! We’ll definitely pick one up for the flight to my St. Louis reading next month.

Had soooo much fun @NBCC — betta get this next book in the can so I can go back.

12PM: While waiting for the second leg of my flight to Los Angeles

Overheard: two men telling each other the long versions of how they met their wives over beers at ORD. Bit early for beer but romantic.

Now they’re talking about real estate. All the flats they lived in before their current houses. Predicting next subject will be kids.

Sadly, they got up and left after this, perhaps freaked out by the woman that kept side-eyeing them (I’m not a great eavesdropper) and then typing stuff into her phone. We shall never know for sure what the rest of that conversation entailed — though knowing what we do of human beings, I think we can safely assume I was right.

1:05PM: After boarding the plane

so not alone!“@femme40: You are not alone. @frugalista Finally going to start reading The Help. I think I’m the last person to read it…”

I should read that book if only to justify why it took be so long to read it in the first place.

2:05PM

Stuck on @AmericanAir flight tarmac for hour b/c a seat belt was STOLEN. Then mechanic was insanely rude to an innocent passenger. Wow.

Just after being told to put on our seat belts, the woman in the seat behind me called out to a flight attendant that she didn’t have a seat belt. After some stunned investigation, including a call to the pilot who came to assess the situation for himself, they determined that someone must have stolen the seat belt. No one on the crew had ever seen this happen, and the pilot had only vaguely heard of it happening on another flight. It was determined that we’d have to wait for a new seat belt to be delivered, which the pilot figured would take 20 minutes tops. It took longer than that, and when they opened the box, they found two male sides. As opposed to a male and a female.

Meanwhile something was going on with the lavatory that a mechanic was called into fix. I know fixing toilets is no fun, but as he was stomping back to the front of the pain, he yelled at the passenger in to move because he “didn’t get paid to squeeze between ass checks!” The nearby passengers spent the next half hour becoming increasingly offended that he said this.

2:15PM

now @AmericanAir mechanic back and being rude to everyone! Passengers grumbling. Aussie talking about punching him. #mutinyontheaaplane

Having spent an hour on a hot plane, quite a few people were standing up in the aisle trying to give their neighbors some much-needed, air circulation space. The mechanic responded to this during his two trips back and forth from the lavatory by saying that we needed to get out of the aisle because he didn’t want to squeeze between any guy’s asscheeks. He said this over and over again, to the point that I assumed he must be a) drunk, b) on drugs, or c) seriously wrestling with his sexuality. In any case, a simple, “Please everybody sit down” would have sufficed. The Aussie in the seat next to me started talking about punching him at this point. You can never tell if Aussies are joking when they say things like this, but eventually he and the Jewish wife of the man who had received the first insult decided to go confront the mechanic at the front of the plane. As offensive as the pilot was, I was much more worried about…

Worse of all I think phone might lose battery power b/f @AmericanAir lands in LA. #thehorror

2:30Pm

Wow! @AmericanAir just FIRED the mechanic on the spot. Yay! Still no seat belt. Boo! But admire airline for doing right thing re mechanic.

I didn’t overhear the confrontation, but apparently the mechanic’s answer to the Aussie’s and Jewish wife’s angry recrimination went something along the lines of, “Well, I don’t get paid to squeeze between any guy’s ass cheeks!” At which point he was promptly fired by whoever in the front of the cabin had the power to to do so. A few minutes later an AA rep came an apologized profusely for his behavior. Pretty impressive. But then we had nothing to rally around, so then everyone just started kind of getting a little loopy, including me…

@Americanair flight 90 min delayed. Still no seat belt. Feeling wigged out on hot plane. Neighboring Aussie sounds exactly like #WILFRED

Can I just say, that he really, really did. It was freaky, I began to wonder if I was hallucinating the whole situation. BTW, that’s a really good show. You should watch it. After this tweet, my worst travel nightmare came true:

3:05PM

Must go at 20% power. 2h waiting for @americanair to deliver a seat belt. Flying other to #STL reading. Dont care about their hub

If I wanted to be able to call my husband when we actually got into LAX, I had to power down my phone. But before I went, I managed to squeeze off one last text:

@Americanair now asking for a volunteer to get off the plane aft wrong seat belt delivered. they say it’s freak sitch. Never seen b/f.

The second seat belt just never got delivered. And instead of continuing this contemporary retelling of Waiting for Godot on a plane the long-suffering pilot asked for someone to volunteer to get off the plane so that the woman with the broken seat (who had missed her connecting flight at this point anyway) could move and we could just go. Usually it takes about 15 to 30 minutes of offering ramped-up incentives before anyone will volunteer their seat on an already full flight. But before the pilot could even offer so much as a voucher, one man unbuckled himself and announced, “I’m going! I’m getting off this plane!” The announcement was so abrupt that I wondered if he was volunteering or melting down, but I joined in with the Thank Yous and applause as he strode off the plane.

Well, I read an article about forgiveness in a yoga magazine on the flight back to Los Angeles. Also, to their credit, the pilot and attendants did everything in their power to make up for what had passed, and to get what passengers they could to their connecting flights on time. At least that’s what I told myself a few hours later, when I saw that I’d have to pay $200 dollars more per ticket to book the same flight on another carrier, since you know, American Airlines does have a hub in St. Louis and all that. I put my anger aside and booked the tickets. After which I tweeted my last message of the night:

10PM

After hullabaloo about how I wouldn’t fly @AmericanAir after what happened, booked w/ AA for #STL. They were v. apologetic and I’m cheap #fb

And while we’re on the subject of Twitter, do gives us a follow @fierceandnerdy