Airports are a great place to make snap judgments. It’s the vacillation between the boredom of standing in lines and the panic of missing a flight that makes us wearily side-eye our fellow passengers. Like a boring version of Gladiators, airports funnel crowds of people into a confined space to complete obstacles – check-in, immigration, security, finding a seat next to an outlet. Individualism thrives in this space. Every man is out for himself – cutting queues or clogging overhead bins with duty free bags instead of putting them under their seat, making some craythur check in their carry-on. Only the strong survive – or the very daft who have no self awareness about the inconvenience they cause to others.
This research is based on my observations during a recent 40-hour trek from Sydney to Dublin, thanks to a mechanical fault with a plane and missed connections.
This is exactly the right amount of time and boredom required to come up with the theory that there are two types of people in the world: those who collect their tray after putting their belt back on at security and return it to its rightful place; and those who take what they need only to abandon it on the overcrowded conveyor belt, making a dam of trays and blocking everyone else’s stuff from coming through.
These are the same people who don’t put their shopping trolleys back and let them drift around the car park collecting paint off of people’s car doors. This is the same cohort who hoarded toilet paper in the pandemic and had to sell it on Facebook marketplace months later. They operate with a single motive – to seek convenience for themselves despite the cost to others. In any given situation their subconscious brain only asks one question: “What is the best thing to do for me and me only?” Then they do it.
Do I look like a soft target? Do I give off the sad vibes of a person who can be inconvenienced?
If I was hiring people, I would send candidates to the airport
If I were an agony aunt, my advice would always be ‘leave them’
Deliver me from the banal evil of ‘hot desking’. I dream of a desk with carpeted walls
The tray-putter-backers, however, are the ones propping up society. They are what separates us from the animals. They stop us from sliding into a Lord of the Flies apocalypse situation. They know what needs to be done to keep the world functioning and they do it. They don’t say “that’s not my job” and shrug. They just take action. It’s their civic duty to keep the world turning and the security line flowing.
If I worked in HR and was in charge of hiring people, I would send candidates on a trip and watch how they behaved in an airport to make a true assessment. Did they walk away and leave their tray? They won’t even put a pinky toe out of their way to help anyone else. They’re not a team player. Good luck getting them to do anything if it doesn’t directly benefit them.
Or did they help a frazzled mother travelling alone to get her suitcase up while she wrestled a toddler doing a perfect impression of a squirming eel into a seat? That’s the person you want on the payroll. That’s the person who will step in to lend a hand to get a project over the line. An altruistic soul who prevents a problem becoming fully formed by helping without being asked.
“It’s just an airport/aeroplane, Brianna. Calm down,” I hear some people (tray-abandoners most likely) say. But 40 hours in transit, long queues at service counters and a surprise stopover in Doha have changed me. I have the thousand yard stare. I have seen too much about human nature to go back to ignorance. I have smelled too much to know too many among us believe deodorant is an option and not a social responsibility.
[ If I were an agony aunt, my advice would always be ‘leave them’Opens in new window ]
When my flight was cancelled, I was promised a spare seat beside me on my new flight. The poor woman’s business class. But I was jammed into a row next to both the loo and the galley. For 14 hours when I wasn’t being woken by the slamming of metal drawers and passengers hassling the crew for more drinks to get their money’s worth, the toilet light shined into my eyes like an interrogation lamp whenever someone went in or out the door, which was 15cm from my head. To pass the time, I played a really fun game of “I didn’t hear the sink so that person didn’t wash their hands and is touching all the same surfaces as me”.
Luckily, my travel partner’s primary way to cheer up any situation is by imagining a worse one. “At least we’re not on a coffin ship,” he smiled. Comparing things to the Famine might not be a therapist-sanctioned coping mechanism, but it seems to work for him. And I trust his judgment. He was the one stacking all the leftover trays at security without being asked, keeping things going with only a slight passive-aggressive “I’ll shtick the tray back for ya, don’t bother” muttered under his breath.
