You’re not imagining it: Air travel really is becoming more unpleasant. Sure, COVID-19, germophobia, and mask mandates were a short-term catalyst of bad airline behavior, but there’s a deeper problem causing the skies to become less friendly: We no longer think it’s good or important to treat other people well.Doing unto others as you would have done unto you, or loving your neighbor, those are now derided as old-fashioned. At best, they’re bad business. At worst, they’re oppression or something.American Airlines began a system of grading its flight attendants, which might sound to a passenger like a tool for accountability. But the airline’s grading rubric was different from what yours might be. It was largely about cost-savings, it seems, and so 81% of attendants said they feared “criticism or discipline” from management if they were “to go above and beyond for customers.”
That is, give the customer what he paid for, and not a pretzel more.This misanthropic attitude has spread to the customers, if social media is to be believed.A viral video from an Instagram user depicted a particularly fitting (and odd) flare-up from a recent Delta flight.A window-seat passenger returned from the bathroom and found to her displeasure that her middle-seat neighbor had opened the window shade. When she shut it, her neighbor pleaded with her to open it, explaining that she gets anxious during takeoff and needs to be able to see out the window.The lady at the window explained, “I’m just looking at her, trying to process what that has to do with me.”You see, we live in an age where individual autonomy is king. The window passenger never consented to being nice to the middle-seat passenger, and as the window sitter, she had unofficial property rights over the window shade. Can you imagine the nerve?! Asking a favor?!LOVE ONE ANOTHER? THAT’S UNPAID DOMESTIC LABOR“Her peace does not matter to me,” the window passenger explained. “All of her tears and all of her complaining, and however entitled she feels, none of that has anything to do with me.”Keep in mind that the window passenger was the narrator, filmer, and poster of this video. She thought this made her look good. She had been asked to do uncompensated care work, and she had preserved her own peace and power.And these days, it seems, everything is all about power.
