After one last day of exploring Vancouver, I reluctantly headed to the airport yesterday late afternoon for my return flight back to New York. After I boarded the plane, which was headed to Phoenix since there’s no direct flights on American between Vancouver and New York, a middle-aged white woman was conspicuously (and audibly) disgruntled that there was no overhead compartment space for her roller bag. She took the liberty to announce quite loudly before she sat down, “Before boarding, the crew had announced that this would be a completely full flight, and people would have had some grace to check their bags, but I guess it goes to show that people lack humility and courtesy for others.” She then took the middle seat next to me in the second row of economy class.

Damnit, she is sitting next to me.

Because of the big fuss she made, the crew was kind enough to take her roller bag and store it in the First Class closet. She really lucked out. 

The woman proceeded to try to make small talk with me when I had my earbuds in. Why is she doing this?She revealed to me (and pretty much everyone on the first half of the plane because of how loud she was) that she had two connecting flights before reaching her destination, the Cayman Islands, where she works in the hospitality industry and has for the last fifteen-plus years. She was scared of having her bag lost because the last time she flew on American, she had her bag misplaced and had to wait two days for it, so there was no way she’d allow them to force check her bag this time. In the end, she got what she wanted by being so obnoxious, but did she really need to share her entire life story so loudly?

We took off. She probably realized at some point that I really did not want to talk to her, so then she turned to the man seated in the window seat of our row and tried to talk to him… after he had his eyes closed and was clearly trying to sleep. She seriously has no common sense. When he made it even more obvious that he absolutely did not want to talk to her and continued closing his eyes, she thencontinued to get the attention of the people in the row in front of uswho had a service dog, and started telling them about her life story, including how much she loves dogs.This woman could not have been more frustrating in her existence.

But this woman really had to epitomize the most annoying specimen on this flight when the flight attendants came around with snacks and drinks, and I asked for a wine and a snack box. Since I have Executive Platinum status on American, if I am seated in economy, I always get these items complimentary because that’s a perk of the status; you wouldn’t know this unless you actually kept track of flight status perks or had this level of status. But the flight attendant who served me tried to make me pay, and I told her that I had “EP” status, so I shouldn’t have to pay. This middle-seat woman decided to interject and said, “Of course you have to pay! Why wouldn’t you have to pay?” I glared at her, shocked that she would say anything in an interaction that had nothing to do with her. Does she even know what “EP” stands for?! The flight attendant ended by admitting she was wrong after some back and forth and said she didn’t check the EP list. She gave me my food and drink and continued serving others.

I later found out that this woman was Canadian and originally from Vancouver. She was in town to visit family. Considering how rude, annoying, and invasive she was, I really had thought she was just another dumb and entitled American flying on AA. She’s tainting the “Canadians are friendly” stereotype for me. I suppose, though, that “obnoxious” and “passive aggressive” as adjectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive from “friendly.”