Airplane People: Are you a Stander, a Waiter, a Chatter, or a Bigot?

College students across campus have one question following the holidays: What type of person was I on the forty-five minute plane ride from Cedar Rapids to Chicago? Through extensive research, The Doily’s Intelligence Reporting Society (the IRS for short) has discovered that most people fit into four categories. To discover which you are, take the following quiz!

Are you rude to the only flight attendant who is a person of color?

a. No

b. No

c. Not on purpose

d. Yes

When in the window seat, do you stand up awkwardly, or just wait?

a. Stand

b. Wait

c. Complain

d. Talk about “bad neighborhoods”

Do you greet the people you sit next to?

a. No

b. If eye contact is made

c. Boy do I

d. Depends on the people

What do you bring to do on the plane?

a. Phone with fake Tetris

b. Book

c. iPad with Grown Ups One and Two, no headphones

d. Heritage Foundation-themed word search

Do you check your bags?

a. No

b. No, unless asked

c. Yes

d. No, in case they steal it

If you chose mostly A, you are a stander! You are annoying, but often you’ll receive the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you have a connecting flight, maybe your legs fell asleep, maybe you have an illegal arms deal to make. You don’t push people aside, you don’t cut in front of people. You wait your turn most of the time, you just happen to stand up as soon as the seatbelt sign turns off, making everyone else slightly more anxious to get off.

If you’re a B picker, you wait as if there is nothing to wait for. You probably don’t talk to the people next to you besides a short greeting. You always use headphones, you don’t turn on the reading light, because you know the only time you would need it would be when everyone else is asleep. When the plane is taxiing for a long time, you don’t make an exasperated noise. When the plane lands, you sit still, as if you sat beneath the Bodhi tree as the Buddha himself once did. You are perfectly content to sit and radiate peace.

If C was your main choice, congrats, you are a chatter! You love to talk. You’re probably a millennial at heart, and at some point during the conversation you’ve forced your neighbors into you pull out several pictures of your puppers. You are not a malicious soul, but more of a neutral evil type.

If D was your choice, you need to look inward. Yes, you are a bigot. We are sorry to break this news to you, but honestly not that sorry, since clearly you need help. Maybe go take a social work class while North Hall is (currently) undemolished. Maybe like, look at the news one time or something. Something’s gotta change here, bud.

Next time you take that plane from CID, think about the Doily. Consider, “What would my only source of information say?”

They would say, “We can’t always be a waiter. But we can always never be a bigot.”