A few years ago, I boarded a flight on AA and took my window seat in coach. As I sat, I felt a lump in the seat under my rear, so I reached and encountered something large, paper and squishy. I stood back up to look, and found that someone had stuffed a barf bag into the space between the seat and the bulkhead, so that some of it was protruding into the seat. I pulled it out gingerly. This bag was completely full with ‘something’ liquid. Fortunately, the top had been folded over and the closures had been used, so it was more-or-less sealed closed, but it didn’t look especially secure.
Not sure about what to do with it, I rang the call button. The FA who came was quite disgusted (as was I). She suggested that I should discard my own barf so that nobody else had to touch it, but turned a little green herself when I explained that it wasn’t mine – that I had found it in the seat. Since I was already holding it, I was quite willing to take it to the trash, but I wasn’t sure if I should just throw it away, since it might be a biohazard. Also, since the plane was still boarding, I didn’t really want to go out into the aisle with the boarding passengers for fear of being jostled and having the bag come open. She agreed that it should probably go into a plastic bag before going into the trash, and told me she would go get one. Because the flight was still boarding, it took her a while to get forward and back, so I ended up literally ‘holding the bag’ for about 10 minutes. I didn’t want to put it down or into the seat pocket because I was afraid it would come open – so I just held it. The thought that I was cradling a pint of someone else’s vomit in my hands kind of made me want to add to it.
Finally, after 10 minutes of contemplating what might happen if the bag opened, or whether I was going to get some awful disease from it, and feeling more and more nauseous myself, the FA returned with a plastic bag and wearing rubber gloves, which somehow made me feel even more nauseous at the thought I’d been holding it bare handed. As she relieved me of the bag, she suggested that I might want to go to the lav to wash my hands, but I was already on my way!
But come on, anonymous barf-bag filler! Did it really seem like a good solution to you to stuff that bag of your barf into the seat for someone else to find?
Demotage
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