Strike that. The large are already the majority
The Fattening of America and
‘Fat Land’: Supersizing America and
More people are fat or obese, says government report
It’s only ridiculous because it’s untrue. People are not being asked to accept that, any more than I’m being asked to accept that a bottle of wine I can buy for $5 at a grocery store costs me $15 at a restaurant.
People have the choice not to fly with any airline that offers them that choice. They absolutely have the right to decide that an additional inch or two of space isn’t worth nearly double the cost per ticket.
What they don’t have the right to do is to decide to purchase a cheap ticket knowing that it’s not going to be sufficient to them, knowing that they’re going to use up part of my seat, and expecting me to blame the airline rather than them for their refusal to buy a seat adequate to their needs.
The rest of your post is pretty much irrelevant, since it assumes there’s some nonexistant “fair price” for tickets which airlines should be aiming for.
I repeat: if you don’t like the service offered at the price offered, don’t buy the service. Tell the provider the conditions under which you’ll return to being their customer. But DO NOT wait for me to buy service from them, then buy service from them yourself and use part of MY service, and expect me to hold the service provider at fault.
Wrong. The only way to come to an equitable distribution of fares is for everyone to pay what they think the service is worth, and for folks not to steal one another’s services. If you absolutely need 21" of seat width in order to fly, then you should not even consider purchasing any seat of a smaller size. You should only look at tickets that offer at least a 21"-wide seat. If those tickets are too expensive for you, you need to consider alternatives to flying.
I’m not weeping big tears for you, either. I’ve gone through long periods in my life when I couldn’t afford to fly anywhere – not because I was big, but because I was poor. Nobody offered to subsidize my tickets when I couldn’t afford the minimum service that I needed (an economy-class ticket), and I didn’t complain about it. That’s just life: you can’t always afford a luxury that you want.
Daniel
Arrrr. Quiet you!
Yeah, but the majority of folk can fit into an airplane seat without crushing their neighbors. And be wary of headlines that say things like “6 of 10 Americans are overweight.” Maybe, but overweight doesn’t necessarily mean fat. Freshman year of college I weighed in at an astonishing - hold on to your knickers - six lbs overweight! :eek: I know, I know, I was ginormous. But seriously, I didn’t even know I was overweight until I got a weight analysis. 5’7" 153 didn’t seem bad to me, but apparently I was “overweight.” Moral of the story is people in that 6 can be anywhere from 1 lb over to morbidly obese. While the majority of Americans (hmm, Americans) may be technically overweight, the majority of them are not obese and will not flood my seat with their love handles.
I agree but give them time…give them time. :eek:
I was actually responding to several of the uneducated responses, not the OP. Sorry that I did not make this clear.
Don’t look at me, you were the one bitching because someone overflowed onto your seat. Hey, like you said, life’s not fair. Deal.
Personal peeve, and a request to all Pitters… if you think “Life’s not fair” is stunning repartee, please reexamine your arguments. Yes, we all know life’s not fair, but if you don’t want to hear opposition to your opinions, then don’t read the followups.
If this is what arguments come down to in here (as often as I see people posting this) to the the only follow-up to any Pit post should be from a moderator saying “Life’s not fair, thread closed.”
Fine, Charge me per pound. I don’t weigh four times what you do, or take up four times your space in cubic feet. But assuing someone who is twice your girth should have to pay four times as much is just foolish.
This was intended to be sarcasm, in response to the “lose some damn weight” comments. Apparently skinny people aren’t attuned to sarcasm. No wonder you’re all so thin; they left out some parts.
[sub]NOTE: The above comment was sarcasm. If you are feeling light-headed or confused, please seek counseling. If you do not comprehend the concept of sarcasm, then “Hi, welcome to our planet, we hope you mean us no harm.” It’s either got to be that, or “What’s it like being in a partial coma?”[/sub]
[sub]NOTE: The above comment was also sarcasm. I now return you to the remainder of the post, in which will not use sarcasm, in an effort to allow both my chubby compatriots and the humorless starving ones comprehension in spades.[/sub]
Ah, wish it were so. Due to the type of diet I follow to stay away from high blood-sugar land, I spend about $400-$500 a month on food for myself alone (high protein, very low carbs, and a lot of foods made with substitute ingredients, all of which seem to be painfully expensive. I make a killer low-carb cheesecake though, only 5g of carbs a slice, but you’d better like silken tofu, carb-free chocolate and cocoa powder, undigestible bran for the crust, egg whites, and Splenda).
Unfortunately, no. I suffer from narcolepsy, and one of the ways it has manifested itself with me is that I have a painfully slow metabolism, because my brain thinks I’m always asleep.
My injury rate is higher than most people working out in the gym though, due to the extra weight. This sucks. My knees are going to last about another ten years, I’d bet, before I have to get them replaced. Wonder if I whine about it on this board then I can get the surgery for free?
[sub] Okay, okay okay, that was sarcasm again. Sorry. It’s in my blood.[/sub]
My dietary intake today has been (and I’m being very bad today, due to eating from the vending machine for lunch) an english muffin, toasted, for breakfast (nothing on it), two 20oz. diet cokes, and a 1.5oz bag of sourdough pretzels. And a piece of mint-a-burst gum too, can’t forget that. Gum has sugar in it, feh.
Dinner tonight is going to be grilled orange roughy, corn on the cob, and a green salad with a tablespoon of Thousand Island.
Life’s not fair.
[sub]Dammit, sarcasm again.[/sub]
Here’s the thing. One group of people is saying, “Hey, look, the airline doesn’t offer me the service I want (wide seats) at a price I like. Instead, I’m going to buy a service that’s inadequate for my needs, trusting that I can steal part of the service that my neighbor on the plane purchases. Will that mean that my neighbor, who purchased a service adequate to his needs, will no longer have a service adequate to his needs? Tough. Life’s not fair.”
Then there’s the other group saying, “Look. You purchase a service adequate to your needs, and I’ll purchase one adequate to mine. You don’t steal from me, and I won’t steal from you. You don’t try to prevent me from negotiating a cheap price for what I need, and I won’t try to prevent you from negotiating a cheap price for what you need. Can you not find anyone to sell you the service you want at a price you like? Tough: life’s not fair.”
Surely you see the difference between these two? Surely you can see that one party is stealing from other people and then, when the other people complain, telling them life’s not fair? Surely you can see the other group of people isn’t stealing anything, is negotiating prices in good faith, and then when other people want to steal from them, denying them the right to steal, saying Life’s not fair?
Life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t mean you’ve got the right to make it more unfair for other people. If your size prevents you from getting cheap tickets, that’s the unfairness of life, and i can’t help you. If your neighbor prevents you from using the service you purchased, that’s your neighbor’s unfairness, and I’ll try to help you out there.
Daniel
Thaaaaaaank you, Daniel. I cannot believe how ridiculous and repetitive this thread has gotten. Gah to all of you people who think it’s somehow okay to allow your body masses to rest on top of other passengers.
Daniel, I said nothing about LIKE. I said CAN AFFORD.
I do not mind paying a reasonable amount more for the fact that I take up space. There are, however, no alternatives to coach, other paying for a business or first class seat. If you own an airline, fix this, and I’ll fly on your airline. If you don’t, you’re another git saying “life isn’t fair, deal with it”, so see my previous post regarding that.
Just because you are uncomfortable with me sitting by you does NOT mean I’m stealing from you. There is no guarantee of comfort on an airline; no where on your ticket does it say you will not be oppressed by another’s seething mass of flesh, so don’t use this “stealing” bullshit argument. Should you pay twice as much for your ticket because you had twice the carry-on volume that I did? By your argument, you should. (Oh, I also check all my luggage, so by this argument, my flight should be FREE!)
The price for a ticket is the cost to get you from point A to point B, that’s all. Anything else is a courtesy, so quit supporting the whining.
For anyone who cares, I priced a plane ticket on travelocity for a random round-trip (ATL to SLC and back) with two weeks’ notice to get the price difference. Coach was $342, Business was $1861, and first class was $2,055. Fair pricing? Maybe if I weighed SIX TIMES what you did. There ARE no other flight options, unless buying or chartering your own plane costs less that that.
Man, how I would love to see these whine-biscuits on a train in the third world… personal space? Hah. Surely you jest…
I am honestly confused by some of the logic displayed in this thread.
The old saying “Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose” seems to apply. If you pay for a ticket, you have a right to a seat on the airplane. You do NOT have a right to a portion of another seat. Whether the situation is caused by weight, excessively long limbs, slumping onto another passenger in sleep, whatever – you don’t have the right to infringe upon another’s space. I’m unclear as to why this is a difficult concept to grasp.
Vanilla Toast, when third-world train tickets cost as much as an airline ticket, get back to me on your “personal space” issue.
Sauron, to the average third world person, they do.
Back to you, twinklemuffin.
Vanilla Toast, what makes you think you have the right to define “reasonable” for the rest of the world. That is NOT how the world works. Companies offer products and services which they think may be in demand. The fact that a company does not offer what you want does not mean you have a right to steal from others what they have paid for. There are many products and services which are not offered because there is not enough demand or for other reasons. That does not entitle you to force your views on the suppliers.
If my apartment is small for my needs by 2 feet I can buy the entire apartment next door but I am not entitled to force the owner to give me 2 feet for free.
If you don’t want to pay for business class then lose some weight so you can fit in an economy seat or stay home or rent a truck. The airlines have no obligation to cater to your specific needs. They have seats and classes as they see fit and your options are to accept that of go somewhere else. If you want to run the airline then you have to buy it first. The owners run the airlines, not the fat people.
Vanilla, that some of the stupidest crap I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I shit you not. First, there is a certain amount of luggage you can check without paying. I have gone over the max before and guess what happened. Hope you have a good heart, or else this one might do the trick for ya. Are you ready?
.
.
.
I HAD TO PAY.
Second, you are NOT paying for A to B. If that were the case, one would be able to buy one ticket and then take up the whole damn aircraft. You cannot do that. You are paying for space You cannot buy a single plane ticket and expect your neighbors to be keen on you taking up their space. Seriously, what about this concept evades you?
Sure there are alternatives. Do what I did when I was too poor to afford the seat I needed: don’t fly. Don’t complain to me that nobody is offering you the service you want at a price you can afford. Shit, nobody’s willing to sell me a ticket to Tahiti for $100, and I can’t afford more than $100. Am I complaining?
No.
Lemme tell you what I’d do if this happened to me (i.e., somebody decided to steal some of my seat on a flight). I’d complain to the flight attendant and ask that the person be reseated. If they weren’t reseated, or if I weren’t reseated, I’d write a letter to the airline letting them know why I’d never fly with them again, that they’d lost my business.
I wouldn’t try to legislate some sort of special weight-restriction on flying or anything. I’d use the mechanism that’s already in place – the free market – to resolve my concerns.
I suggest you do the same. I’m no huge free-market proponent; there are many cases where I think it fails. But this is not one of those cases.
Daniel
You really don’t want to play that game with me, sporty.
Tell you what – give me a cite that says the average third-world citizen has to travel on business by train on a semi-regular basis, and we’ll talk. Heck, any sort of cite that mentions the amount of business travel done in third world by train. Otherwise, no.
sailor, here’s a photo of me.
http://www.markh.com/photos/mark.jpg
In reference, that lamp behind me is your standard 6’ torchiere.
I am not blobulous. I am merely big. I am big in the sense of, you would not want to meet me in a dark alley without knowing my intentions. I assume your concept of “losing some weight” must mean surgically removing my arms and legs so I can fit into seats without touching the sides. Is “Lose some weight” all you slack-jawed mouthbreathers can come up with?
Another point, most vehicles (excluding things like the Lincoln Navigator and other such behemoths) all have the same legroom, trucks included. I drove a Ranger for eight years, and it had less legroom than my old 77’ Corolla.
If you do fly, then I must say that apparently the airlines do cater to the ignorant. No where did I say I had the right to decide “reasonable” for the rest of the world, so stop putting words in my posts that aren’t there.
I have to (occasionally) travel for work. I do not get to choose my flights, etcetera. I also cannot change jobs, because I am fortunate, in this day and age, to be employed at all. I’m making 45% of what I was two years ago, I’m already painfully underemployed, and there are no job openings in my field within 500 miles that I’ve been able to find. Not that it matters for another year, as I signed an agreement to stay here for two years just to GET this job. So, not travelling isn’t really much of an option, either.
Again, even though I keep getting accused of missing the point, the problem here is… the rest of you are missing my response. I will use smaller words for you, lest it be my vocabulary that you find confusing:
There are no alternatives.
There, I said it. I can’t afford business class, so there isn’t an alternative. Charge us per pound and dole out seats in order of size, fine. Just do me a favor and quit the self-rightgeous bullshit about how the world is inadequately designed for anyone beyond normal size is my fucking fault.
It’s a pity that I can’t travel without some asshat complaining that my knees are touching his seat or my arm is on his armrest, while I’m numb from the waist down due to the width of the armrests. Therefore, I don’t often do it.
Hey, if big people have to stay home, asshats should too. That includes, oh, about half of you whiners. Enjoy your couch, it’s your vacation spot next year!
Oh, and since I am going to have to pay more for everything, all of you need to start paying people based upon their size, because that fits your argument, as well. You’re getting more for your dollar, after all!
Please, world, someone tell me that ANYONE out there understands my point?
I don’t suppose business travel by burro would count, would it? By ox?
Daniel
What game? Was it anything like taking this quote:
and converting it into this:
Hey, I’ve been on thirld world trains plenty of times. How do you think I travel when I’m visiting my fam down in Costa Rica? It’s by cab or train mostly. I’ve never had the problem of someone’s excessive body fat cramping my space.
Maybe it’s because there aren’t a lot of morbidly obese people in the third world. 
Yeah, I understand your point, and I summed it up above. You purchase a service that you know will be inadequate to your needs, knowing in advance that you’ll compensate by using part of the service that your neighbors purchased, and you expect your neighbors to be angry at the service provider rather than at you.
I’m sorry you gotta travel for work and that your boss won’t pay for the travel service you need. Sounds like you got a shitty boss in that respect. But that’s between you and your boss, not between you and your neighbor on the plane.
When you say “there are no alternatives,” you’re simply not telling the truth. There are no alternatives that are convenient for you, that’s true, but there are always alternatives.
Good luck convincing your boss to pay for the travel services you need!
Daniel