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If I'm so Smart How Come I'm Not Rich? how come im not rich
I've been doing some traveling lately and various inconveniences inspired me with immediate solutions.

Getting stuck in the middle seat on an airplane stinks. Everybody knows this. This is definitely drawing the short straw, getting squeezed between two strangers for a couple hours. Here are two suggestions for easing the insult and the pain.

Make the middle seat a couple inches wider than the window and aisle seats. Why do they need to be the same width? Duh?

Credit 1.5 frequent flier miles to passengers who set stuck in a middle seat. This might actually entice some folks to request a middle seat, or at least as you are stuffed into the middle you can feel some sense of reward.

I also spent a lot of time on elevators in a tall business hotel. I had a room on a high floor which had a nice view, but it also meant that my commute to the lobby was a five minute ordeal. The worst part was that by the time we had progressed a few floors down, the elevator was already full, but we continued to stop at every floor where someone was waiting, open the doors, and watch them peek in and then step away.

Why not build a weight sensor into the elevator that detects when it is full and then just stop at floors which are requested by a button within the elevator?

And why not give me 1.5 frequent flier miles for every unnecessary stop I have to make in the full elevator? Oh wait, I think I'm getting my issues mixed up here.

( Jul 01 2005, 10:16:06 AM MDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Comments:

Well, I've been reading the classic, "How to win friends and influence people." You don't get rich by complaining. You could try to turn the middle seat into a positive by using the uncomfortably close quarters as a segway into meeting your fellow passengers. Money comes to you when you treat people well. Smiling, thanking people, giving deserved praise, listening with interest and remembering and using people's names - these small but well known behaviors add up to be a likeable person. And likeable people move through society with less friction.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to quiz myself on what I've learned so far!

Posted by 192.18.98.64 on July 21, 2005 at 10:12 AM MDT #

The middle seat solutions are good (and egalitarian) ideas. I'll point out that, on United at least, offering 1.5 miles for middle seats would mean more "Premier" and "Premier Executive" members which means more people that expect to get the extra leg room in Economy Plus and first choice of aisles without people in the middle seats. Somehow this has the feel of being ultimately self-defeating. Another potential dilemma is if Ivan the Unplugger, for example, liked the middle seat because of the extra space, his elbows would be jabbing two neighbors on a full flight. Ordinarily, there would be a 4 in 6 chance (in a typical 737) that he'd only have one neighbor to jab. And what is the etiquette if there's an empty aisle seat and the middle and window are full? Does middle-boy have to move over? But what if he doesn't fit as well over there? You'd be side by side with Ivan all the way to Singapore or something with an empty aisle seat just taunting you! It'd be like when a guy walks in and uses the adjacent urinal when there's a whole bank of them available. Nothing wrong with that, as they say, but it is a mild violation of guy-etiquette (sorry for the exclusive language; I would use an inclusive example from the world of women if I knew any. Examples, I mean. I know some women. Well, one anyway.) The elevator idea is a good engineering solution. Do it! My irritation with elevators in the US is that if you hit the wrong button on the inside, there's nothing you can do except endure. In Asia, about 75% of the elevators allow you to unselect a floor by hitting that button again.

Posted by Chas Partee on October 21, 2005 at 01:02 PM MDT #