Private habits in public places

Have you noticed that people don't necessarily keep their private grooming habits private anymore? In the past couple of weeks, I've seen people 1) flossing their teeth 2) picking their nose 3) brushing their teeth (and yes, spitting, as well) on my airplanes. It used to be that clipping toe nails and applying nail polish and make up was as bad as it got. (Well, there was the time I had to tell someone to put their shoes back on, because the smell of their (ok, his) feet had permeated the whole front section of the plane.) While I'm on the subject of feet, please don't put your feet, (often without shoes) up on the bulkhead, or on the person's seat in front of you. I don't care if you've recently had a pedicure and have pretty pink flowers painted on your toenails. No one wants someone else's feet in the tiny little space they are allowed. We once arrested a woman (for interfering with a flight crew instructions) who would not remove her feet from the seat in front of her for 8 hours because she didn't want the person to put their seat back and go into HER space. She steadfastly kept her legs locked and her knees up against the seat the whole flight, even after we removed the other passenger and put her in a very large, comfortable first class seat. She couldn't walk as she was led off the plane to the European police, and she was banned from flying our airline again, but, she had proved her point, right?

And, what makes people think it's ok to walk around an airplane and ESPECIALLY into a bathroom with bare feet? And, let your children do it? What do you think that liquid on the floor of a bathroom is? Think turbulence, someone off balance trying to hit the toilet--yep, you guessed it. That's not water.

Then there was the time a passenger asked me to "ask whoever it is that is having so much gas to stop having so much gas." When I asked her to repeat that, she did, an octave higher, which effectively took care of the situation. I had a whole team of wrestlers on once, and wow, did they have a lot of gas. Something about their restrictive diets to keep them in their weight classes. They even knew each other's gas smells and patterns, and joked about it at landing. "wow, nelson, you really went at it today, etc....." Not cool, not cool.

I've had to ask passengers to quit snoring, listening to music so loud, watching a video with the sound on, making out, move into their own space when they are flowing over into others with their seat back, arms out, head out in the aisle...and they are never happy with me. In fact, I've noticed that whenever you ask people to stop doing something they already shouldn't be doing, they get very crabby. And that should be outlawed, as well. We are all together, crammed in this metal tube, for whatever length of time it is. Suck it up! You chose this mode of transportation. There are other options: cars, trains, automobiles...that take TEN times as long to get to your destination! And, if you are alone, you can pass gas all you want.

Really, if you are in a car, an airplane, a bus, etc........people are watching! (and smelling!) When you are about to engage in a private habit in a public place, just don't do it. Enter a bathroom, (alone--more on that later) with your shoes on, and keep your private habits PRIVATE.