Travel Pet Peeves?
 

I know this is a weird question but does anyone other than me have any travel pet peeves?

I just got back from a trip and one thing that drives me crazy at the airport is people trying to board a plane with a carryon, personal bag (handbag, computer case, etc), and a bunch of other little bags in addition to the alloted two carryon items.

When they are asked to either combine or check the excess, they get pissed off and act like they are being singled out.

I saw this on every one of my connections this week.

Strange.

PERFUME!

People who do not allow enough time for connections and spend the last 30 minutes on the plane complaining that they are not going to make their connection.

The usual...

Crying babies or wailing toddlers (this only applies when the parents are doing absolutely nothing to try and quiet or calm them)

400 lb. man sitting beside me who has passed out and has his head on my shoulder and is enveloping me in noxious exhalations of airport hot dog fumes

someone clipping nails - snip, snip, snip

married man trying to pick me up

people seated in the front of the plane who board before they are supposed to and make it difficult for those seated in the back to get by

people who sit in your seat and make you ask them to get up so you may have it and then get perturbed that you asked

people who put their feet up on the bulkhead (especially when they're bare)

people who get up and down incessantly and clamber over you to do so (just tell me when we first get on that you will be making a zillion trips to the bathroom, and I'll be glad to give you my aisle seat)

annoying personal habits - the throat clearer, the gum snapper, the back-of-seat kicker, the elephant seal snorer, the complainer (I'm too cold, hot, food is bad, etc.)

people who yell at airport personnel when they were late to the gate and missed their flights

people who reach in front of you and grab their luggage off the baggage carousel and almost knock you down

people who throw their seatbelts off as soon as the plane lands and jump to their feet as soon as possible and jab their elbow in your ear while trying to deplane before anyone else

people in first class (if you were not lucky enough to be upgraded or purchase a first class ticket) who hold their free drinks and look at the coach passengers with disdain as they file by

Hmmm. I guess you can tell I fly a lot and am easily annoyed. I try to be thoughtful of those around me and just ask the same. It's amazing how many people behave like they were raised by wolves when they fly and make it unpleasant for other passengers. I'm sure most of it is not intentional.

Ooh, I can't wait till that next trip. Maybe I can get a Valium prescription or charter my own plane :)

Diana--you are too funny! I love your list!

The FAs take to long to come around and collect the meal trays. I think they do this just to keep us in our seats and that makes me irritated enough that I will get up, even when I wouldn't otherwise want to, just to take the tray back to the galley.

Meal tray? It has been a long time since I've seen one of those!

This question isn't limited to airlines (thanks for topping the other threads Cassandra) but travel as a whole.

I don't like how they emphasize "has" in the following sentence:
"The captain HAS turned on the fasten seatbelt sign".

my biggest pet peeves are cancelled and rerouted flights, also the increasingly tight security measures

1) People who take their cell phones into bathrooms with them and I do mean into the stall. I've seen this happen more and more often, including one time where a woman in the next stall went on and on and ON about how bad her boyfriend was, and it wasn't about how she needed shelter from him either. "He told me and I told him and he told me". She even flushed the toilet to provide sound effects too.

2) People who after hearing safety precautions (please do not slide the bannister, there is a 150 foot drop below), go ahead and do it anyway. Last year in the thermal areas of Yellowstone, some idiot teenage boy kept telling his friends to dip their fingers in one of the little puddles that form there. Some of them did it too >insert screaming here<.

3) Parents who push their little darlings in the front of lines, whatever, even though their are other children waiting paitently and/or parents who think their children are so precious that even though an attraction, i.e, a computer game, says 5 minutes per child, the parents let their children stay and stay and stay and stay . . .

I don't mind if a kid cries or gets cranky as long as the parents make an effort to distract them, but the kids let loose to run up and down the aisle make me crazy. If the parents don't have enough sense to make them sit down then the flight attendants should! I am sure if turbulence hit and the kid was injured those parents would be the first to blame the airline!

Hands down, the people who wait until they get to the front of security to begin the process of excavating their boarding pass and photo ID from the purse, bag or bottomless pit pocket of their overcoat. I flew BWI to BNA yesterday and three people in front of me all did this! Where have they been for the last 2 1/2 years??? I rank them right up there with the person who gets in front of me in the grocery store and waits until everything is wrung up before deciding to start to write the check or look for their cash. In the words of Howard Dean, "ARRRRGGGGGHHH!!!"

Without a doubt, my #1 travel pet peeve are hotels that don't have enough hot water, and/or adequate water pressure. The choice between taking a cold shower or no shower at all is not an easy one.

Other pet peeves:

-- Tourists driving on one or two-lane roads who don't understand the concept of PULLING OVER and admiring the view;

-- People boarding airplanes who feel it necessary to stand in aisles, chatting with their friends while making 200+ other people wait to board;

-- Airlines who don't hire enough check-in clerks to service their customers. Some airlines are worse than others, but I hate seeing 75% of the check-in stations with "Closed" signs while hundreds of people are waiting in line;

-- Airport security screeners who are convinced everyone's a terrorist;

Diana mentioned most of the other major irritations in her list.. Screaming babies with mothers who seem oblivious to the noise; first-class snobs etc.

Dittoes to almost everything on this thread, but big dittoes to people sitting in your seat and making you ask them to move.

On a recent flight to Hawaii, I had to ask people to get out of my seat coming and going. On the flight there, some people wanted to sit together. Fine, once they asked me to switch with them I did it, but don't just sit in my seat, look at me blankly like you don't know what the confusion is about, and assume that I will go away when I encounter someone in my seat. The seats are assigned! Where was I supposed to go? Then, on the way back, a couple sat with the middle seat between them saying that they were hoping to have an empty seat. Huh? The seats are ASSIGNED. Do you think that by sitting that way on boarding that will magically make it so? The plane was full. People were getting bumped for goodness sake. At least wait for everyone to board before you takeover the seat next to you. Do you think you have to stake it out and save it from someone discovering that it is empty and sitting down? The seats are assigned! Oh, but the worst offender was a couple I encountered on my way to London. I went to the airport incredibly early so that I would be first in line to check in so that I could get a good seat (since I bought my ticket after they already assigned the percentage of seats that they alloted in advance). I think I got there something like 5 hours before boarding. When I finally got on the plane, there was a couple seated in the aisle and window seats. When I said politely that I thought the husband was in my seat, they gave me incredible attitude and wanted me to go find another seat. Yeah, I don't think so. It turned out fine though. Apparently they didn't want to sit with anyone else and the plane ended up having plenty of empty seats, so at their first opportunity they left and found an empty center row for themselves. I promptly flipped up all the armrests, laid down, and slept all the way to London.

Oh my goodness! I just remembered my worst traveling experience and did involve a screaming baby! WAY back in pre-kids today, my husband and I went to Hawaii for our first anniversary. On the way back home, we boarded the plane almost directly across from us that included a father, mother and two or three children. From the looks of things, father was in charge of the kids while the mother worked on some project. Alas, the youngest child wanted Mommy and started screaming thirty minutes into the flight and did NOT want Daddy. Mommy, however, had "things to do" and ignored the kid until finally the FA came over and asked what was the problem. Turns out the child was hungry but the parents had brought nothing for the child to snack on because they were on a dinner flight (yes in those days, the airlines served plenty of food). The FA said dinner wasn't to be served until two hours. Both parents sort of shrugged, so the FA went and found snacks for the child, which calmed him down. But this was just the start of things. The child screamed for almost the entire flight; the father couldn't help him, the mother would't help him, and in those days, we passengers were too civil to say SHUT THAT KID UP. The FA and the FA ONLY was the only one who tried to help that child. In hindsight, I wish I had taken down her name and wrote a letter of praise to TWA.

Oh yeah, and people who think that they have a right to be obnoxious because they are on vacation.

I recently went to the jubilee show at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. There were chairs set up in rows around the pool area where the show was. Some of the chairs were reserved. I couldn't believe the amount of people who showed up right before the show started, sat in those prime reserved seats, and then argued with the employees when they were told that those seats were reserved for the children that were IN THE SHOW. The head of the kids program told the people that they would have to talk to the hostess to find seats and the head troublemaker told her that SHE would have to do that since it wasn't HIS PROBLEM. Then, there were all the people who would take the folding chairs from their rows in the back and set them up in front of people who had gotten there an hour early so that they could have a good view. One couple put their chairs in the walkway where the ceremonial procession was going to come through. When two of the employees tried to talk to them, the couple IGNORED them and wouldn't even look their way, like the employees weren't even there. The employees had to threaten to call security. The couple then moved their chairs in front of the front row! The level of obnoxiousness was just amazing. I guess people think that they are paying good money to be on vacation so they can do whatever they want.

I guess that's also the rationale behind people who want to get around the carryon or security rules or those who get mad at the airline employees when they arrive too late at the airport to make their flight.

Hotel maids who tuck the blanket and all the sheets firmly in under the mattress all the way up the sides. You can't get into bed without pulling the bottom sheet out as well. I usually end up spending ten minutes remaking my bed before I get into it.

Ridiculous telephone charges. Spending one night in a motel and calling one place to make a dinner reservation can cost $3.50 or more, now that some add on a special charge if you "activate" the phone at all.

Those screens in the airport that show all the flights being "on time" even when they aren't.

Pilots making a big deal about an "early arrival" when you land, but then by the time you get off the plane after driving it half way across the state you're actually getting off the plane 15 minutes late. So what was early?

People getting on a plane, looking at their tickets and seeing they're in row 38, then stopping at every row starting with the first one and double checking it with their tickets to see if it's their row. Yea, like the second row in the plane -- first class -- is going to be row number 38.

Arriving by car at a hotel and having to tip four or five people between the time they take your luggage out of the car, until someone brings it to your room -- sometimes an hour later.

I once borded a flight only to find a smug looking gentleman sitting in my bulkhead aisle seat.

I showed him my ticket stub and politely asked for my bulkhead seat.

He told me to go sit in his seat in row 28 since he was taller.

I went and got the captain who just happened to be the first crew member I found.

He then started arguing with the captain calling him a silly stewardess.

The police came shortly after.

GoTravel, that's hilarious.


Oh, people who turn up their walkmans so loud that we all get to "enjoy" their music and parents who give their children noisy toys and videogames that make obnoxious beeps and buzzes and other sounds for hours.

People who don't get all their stuff together or put all their stuff away before getting on/off the plane so they end up holding up everyone else. Put you bag away and sit down. If you need anything out of it, wait until there is nobody in the aisle. On deplaning, you're jacket should be on or in your hand, your reading materials and drinks and stuff should all be in your purse or whatever and all you should have to do is pull your bag down and walk away.

People with strollers and carts or whatever who stop in the middle of aisles or walkways and block the way for everyone else.

Business travelers who think that everyone should cater to them and their schedule.

Leisure travelers who think that everyone should cater to them because they are on vacation.

People who think that they've been given bad customer service because they didn't get whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it, no matter what.

Smoking, smoking, smoking...oh, and did I mention smoking?

Smoky hotel hallways, elevators and lobbies that I have to pass through to get to my non-smoking room that has smoke pouring in through the "ventilation" system. "Smoke free" dining that is adjacent to the open area bar full of smokers and the invisible barrier that supposedly keeps it from ruining my meal.

Two worst places (Europe excluded) are Virginia and Texas. When we went in to pay for our gasoline in Texas, the bouffant-haired old biddy at the register handed me my change with the same hand she was using to hold her cigarette. Then we actually witnessed a man smoking at the gas pump while filling up his car! We got the hell out of there fast, afraid the entire place would be blown to smithereens. And the hotels in Virginia are just downright disgusting with all the smoke in the lobbies and dining areas.

Can't wait for the day when this legalized drug habit is no longer accepted anywhere.