Hi folks, Bob again. Within the past 2 weeks, there have been 3 commercial airline flights diverted from passengers arguing over reclining seats. I was reading the results of this survey (link below) that shows a whopping 41% of people think its rude to recline your seat. Am I missing something here? Is it really “rude” to recline your seat? Thats what theyre meant to do. For the person behind the recliner who feels as though their personal “space” is being invaded, I guess my thinking is, if the seats recline, isnt that space a few inches behind the seat the “space” of the person in the front seat to use as they wish? Look, as a Christian, I dont want to be rude. I want to be courteous. But I also dont want to be told that something I paid for is not mine to use, like the few inches of space directly behind my seat. In all fairness, this battle does appear to be between two feelings of “entitlement”. The person behind the recliner feels “entitled” to not have the person in front of him/her recline while the recliner feels “entitled” to recline in their own seat. Now, you folks know I am opposed to the whole “entitlement mentality”, but that is related to feeling you are entitled to something that belongs to other people, that you are entitled to something you didnt earn, work for or pay for. However, if I order and pay for a sandwich in a restaurant, I see absolutely nothing wrong with feeling “entitled” to receive the sandwich I paid for. I dont see that as an example of the “entitlement mentality” I criticize. In the same way, if an airline passenger pays for a seat that reclines, then it seems they have paid for the total space that seat occupies, including reclined. Im open to the possibility Im looking at this wrong, but so far, it doesnt seem rude to me to recline in a reclining seat that you paid for. To me, it seems more rude to expect the person in front of you to deny themselves a basic function of their own seat that they paid for. It really does boil down to this one simple truth: When they bought that seat, they bought the reclining space behind it, so it doesnt seem rude to me to use what you bought. So, what do you all think? fivethirtyeight/datalab/airplane-etiquette-recline-seat/
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 19:26:23 +0000
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