I slid into my window seat and got my headphones ready. The flight was only a few hours and I was committed to sleeping through it. The expected bustle of the other passengers finding their seats was broken up by a guy in the row in front of me complaining that he didn’t get the first class upgrade he’d been expecting. He always gets a first class upgrade, he’s always the first on the list, he planned to complain. With his gripes to the airline staff proving pointless he directed his ire elsewhere. To me. He reached back over his seat and smacked me, I’d been listening with my eyes closed while trying to nod off and this jolted me back to life. “Did you just hit me?” “Your knee is in my back, these chairs are paper thin, you need to sit differently” “No, you need to get your hand out of my face” This was off to a bad start, and unsurprisingly the guy failed at convincing me to readjust myself for his comfort. He was really not happy without his first class upgrade. He was really not happy without everyone around him jumping to his every wish. He complained again, the flight staff told him there was nothing they could do. He called me an asshole and I kicked his seat again. The lady sitting next to him was also a problem as she was using more of the arm rest than he felt she should have. The guy across the isle was talking to his wife too loud. Everyone was doing something wrong.
An hour in I passed the flight attendant a note scribbled on a drink napkin and folded up with a $100 bill. It would be a shame if turbulence dumped a drink on him. 10 minutes later he was wearing a suit covered in bloody mary. Small price to pay.