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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/26/recline-tilt-seat-air-passenger
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| Recline and fall: if you tilt your seat back, I’ll steal your dessert | Recline and fall: if you tilt your seat back, I’ll steal your dessert |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Flying is nightmarish, but we’ve all got our little life-hacks that we use to make it bearable. Maybe you bring a neck pillow, splash out on noise-cancelling headphones, or import some melatonin to get over jetlag. My favourite tip is this: on a long-haul flight, I wait until the food is served, and then reach over to the tray of the person on my right, and take their dessert. The sugary goodness really improves my trip, and the thrill of taking something that isn’t mine is great. A lot of people get angry when I do this, but they’re just being unreasonable; if they really care about dessert, they should just reach over and take one from the tray of the person on their right. | Flying is nightmarish, but we’ve all got our little life-hacks that we use to make it bearable. Maybe you bring a neck pillow, splash out on noise-cancelling headphones, or import some melatonin to get over jetlag. My favourite tip is this: on a long-haul flight, I wait until the food is served, and then reach over to the tray of the person on my right, and take their dessert. The sugary goodness really improves my trip, and the thrill of taking something that isn’t mine is great. A lot of people get angry when I do this, but they’re just being unreasonable; if they really care about dessert, they should just reach over and take one from the tray of the person on their right. |
| Sure, there’s always some poor sod who’s on the far side of the plane who can’t steal anyone’s cake – and some lucky bastard who’s over on the other side and gets two – but if airlines didn’t want me to do it, why did they make the seats so close together in the first place? | Sure, there’s always some poor sod who’s on the far side of the plane who can’t steal anyone’s cake – and some lucky bastard who’s over on the other side and gets two – but if airlines didn’t want me to do it, why did they make the seats so close together in the first place? |
| I kid, of course. Your sugar is safe around me – unless, that is, you recline your seat, grinding my knees, just so you can be 10 degrees closer to the horizontal for a flight in which you’re going to try to sleep for 20 minutes, and then give up and watch films you didn’t bother to see in the cinema first time around. If you do that, I will take your food, march to the exit row, and throw it out the door, in the hope that you’ll chase after it and have the full 36,000ft to realise your error. | |
| Reclining a seat is a zero-sum game. Any possible improvement in comfort you get comes at the expense of the person whose space you are stealing. And since planes have some seats that can’t recline– those against the bulkhead, or in front of the exit row – there will always be losers who can’t even recline their own seats to restore the equilibrium. | Reclining a seat is a zero-sum game. Any possible improvement in comfort you get comes at the expense of the person whose space you are stealing. And since planes have some seats that can’t recline– those against the bulkhead, or in front of the exit row – there will always be losers who can’t even recline their own seats to restore the equilibrium. |
| It’s one of those minor sociopathies of modern life, like playing music on your phone’s loudspeakers or leaving the keyboard clicks on when you type out a text on the tube. But unlike those, crimes that any right-thinking person agrees demand retribution, seat-reclining is seen as a tolerable, even acceptable thing to do. One friend, a tall man with joint issues, had to politely ask the woman in front to return her seat to the upright position because she had, ever so slightly, dislocated his knee. Instead, she shouted at him until the flight attendant intervened. | It’s one of those minor sociopathies of modern life, like playing music on your phone’s loudspeakers or leaving the keyboard clicks on when you type out a text on the tube. But unlike those, crimes that any right-thinking person agrees demand retribution, seat-reclining is seen as a tolerable, even acceptable thing to do. One friend, a tall man with joint issues, had to politely ask the woman in front to return her seat to the upright position because she had, ever so slightly, dislocated his knee. Instead, she shouted at him until the flight attendant intervened. |
| “But how can you sleep on the plane if you don’t recline your seat,” I am asked. Be honest: you can’t sleep on the plane whether or not you recline your seat. Moving the headrest of your chair 30cm into your fellow traveller’s personal space does not magically transform your ticket into a first-class seat with a lie-flat bed: it just screws up their trip. | |
| That’s particularly true if they’re a weirdo like me, who sleeps best on planes slumped forward on to the tray table – a position not physically possible if the seat in front is reclined, and one that feels actively dangerous to be doing while the seat reclines. If I die travelling, it won’t be because of a terror attack, it will be because someone forcefully shoved their chair back while I was sleeping and broke my neck. | That’s particularly true if they’re a weirdo like me, who sleeps best on planes slumped forward on to the tray table – a position not physically possible if the seat in front is reclined, and one that feels actively dangerous to be doing while the seat reclines. If I die travelling, it won’t be because of a terror attack, it will be because someone forcefully shoved their chair back while I was sleeping and broke my neck. |
| “If airlines didn’t want you to recline your seat, then why did they put a button on the armrest that lets you do just that,” my foes cry. Look, I’ll put aside the fact that you’re basing your standards of human behaviour on what an airline thinks is acceptable – the only corporations that would prefer it if they could just strip all their customers naked in the departure terminal, surprise them with chloroform, and ship them stacked in coffins to their destination – and admit that there are plenty of situations in which you can recline your seat. | |
| Maybe there’s no one behind you. Maybe there’s a child behind you. Maybe there’s reincarnated Hitler behind you, brought to life by someone sacrificing a frog over a pentagram made out of 4Chan memes and travelling to the US to begin a lucrative speaking tour about how his free speech is imperilled by campus no-platformers. In those situations, recline away. But if you are sat in front of a full-sized adult human being, then look them in the eye and ask yourself if you’re willing to take something from them just because you can. And if you are, maybe just steal a cookie from their tray while they’re not looking. | Maybe there’s no one behind you. Maybe there’s a child behind you. Maybe there’s reincarnated Hitler behind you, brought to life by someone sacrificing a frog over a pentagram made out of 4Chan memes and travelling to the US to begin a lucrative speaking tour about how his free speech is imperilled by campus no-platformers. In those situations, recline away. But if you are sat in front of a full-sized adult human being, then look them in the eye and ask yourself if you’re willing to take something from them just because you can. And if you are, maybe just steal a cookie from their tray while they’re not looking. |
| • Alex Hern is a technology reporter for the Guardian | • Alex Hern is a technology reporter for the Guardian |
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