Q: Why do airlines ask you not to leave magazines in the seat-back pockets if you’ve finished reading them? I would personally be thrilled to board a plane and find a new issue of a weekly gossip mag in addition to the same old boring in-flight magazine. A: When I boarded a plane a few months ago, I noticed there were three or four magazines in the pocket of the seat in front of me. I thought, “Oh cool, free reading material!” — until I pulled them out and realized they were bodybuilding magazines. From 2008. My seat mate and I had a good laugh over this.
I’m sharing that story because I want to make a point: You can’t assume the next person to sit in your seat will have the same taste in reading material as you. I thought finding random back issues of bodybuilding magazines was funny … but if that had been porn, or, like, Racist Rants Weekly, I would not have been amused.
You can’t even assume the next person in your seat will be an adult. I wouldn’t particularly want my kid reaching for his “Thomas the Tank Engine” book and fishing out Maxim instead. I bet the weekly gossip magazines you mentioned would even offend some people. So I think that’s why airlines ask you to take your reading material with you or throw it away — it spares them complaints.
Q: I was awakened in my hotel room at 6 a.m. when someone started stomping on the floor in the room above me. I tried to ignore it, but couldn’t, and I called the front desk. They said they’d check into it. They called back a few minutes later and said the person upstairs was working out.
Well, I don’t think that’s a good excuse for waking me up. There was a perfectly good gym in the hotel! Could you please remind your readers they should be working out in the gym, not in their hotel room?
A: I can’t do that, because I can think of plenty of reasons someone would prefer to work out in their room rather than the gym. (What if the gym isn’t terribly clean? Or if you just don’t like working out in public? Or you forgot to pack gym clothes?)
However, you shouldn’t do any high-impact exercise in your room, unless you’re on the ground floor. Think yoga, not aerobics or jumping jacks or running in place.
