Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Luggage Trough

Picked my mother up from the airport the other day. Got to watch people in action around the luggage carousel. Interesting study in the human condition. The luggage came out on the left side of the U-shaped conveyor belt and then went back on the right. Before the arrival of the first bag the people gathered near but several feet back from the carousel.



However, once the luggage was traveling on the belt the crowd on the left side where I was moved closer and closer, so close they were actually hanging over the luggage to see up the belt to see if their bag was coming. I couldn't even see through the people let alone get in there to get Mom's suitcase. They were like pigs at the trough.

I decided I wasn't going to get in there and start elbowing people out of the way and Mom isn't known for her work in the corners either, so I figured I'd walk around to the other side of the U and see if there was any space to get near the belt on that side. Well when I got around to the right side the people over there were calmly standing about ten feet back from the belt waiting for their luggage to appear. It was an amazing contrast. Guess it's another example of the Type A and Type B people. In this case the B's had it right. Everyone could get see their luggage and easily get it once seen. The A's were like pigs at the trough fighting for the luggage and all just to gain about a 30 second advantage on the B's.

All this luggage talk harkens me back to my university days when I travelled for one season with the basketball team (not as a player, let me be clear on that). The team added a little spice to the drudgery of the luggage pick-up by each throwing in a quarter and the person whose luggage came out first got the pot. That's all I've got as far as luggage stories go.

1 comment:

  1. Your quarter story made me think of a Seahawk practical joke story I heard on the radio. During road games, players would throw in $100 each and put their jersey number into a draw. The coaching staff would do a reverse draw (meaning if your number was the last to be pulled out, you won). What would happen though is players would pool together. The Linebackers would split the pot if they won, the offensive line, etc. No one would be with the kickers so the punter and kicker only ever got to pool with each other. Josh Brown, who was Seattle's kicker was also famous for trash talking.

    As they loaded onto the bus, Josh asked the punter to put his number in as he was having to do an interview just before getting on the bus. Once on the bus, the coaches began the reverse draw and with every number Josh began to trash talk more until finally there were only two number and Josh was over the top on his trash talk to the entire bus.

    The punter never put in his number. Everyone on the bus knew it but Josh.

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