I had heard nightmares about traffic and lines at LAX so I left my house over 3 hours before my flight this morning. There was no traffic getting to the airport, and we had no problems getting to the terminal. Becuase I had checked in online (why doesn't everyone do this?), it ended up taking me literally only 20 minutes to check my bag and get through security. This left me with nearly 3 hours to hang out in the terminal and wait for my flight to depart.

Considering how annoyed I am on a day to day basis with the general population, it should have come as no surprise to me to see people in the airport behaving like selfish assholes. The terminal was full when I arrived but two flights were set to depart 30 minutes later and it cleared out then. I found a seat and sat down, settling in with a book to read. As we got closer to departure time, more and more people arrived to settle themselves in the terminal. Several people, mostly young-ish girls, decided they absolutely had to do one of the following things: A) talk loudly and incessantly on their cell phone for the entire two hours they were waiting for the plane, B) lay down across several seats to try and grab some shut eye, or C) in addition to option B, one girl decided she also needed to watch Grey's Anatomy on her laptop at full blast without headphones.

As the terminal got more and more full, none of the people laying down had the decency to get up. Of course, I couldn't resist taking photos with my iPhone because if you're being a public jackass, there's no reason you shouldn't be a jackass on the world wide web.

First, here's the annoying girl laying down watching Grey's on her laptop. See the two empty seats at her feet? Even when some people crowded into those seats, she wouldn't get up. In fact, she stayed in this position until she got up to board the plane.

The second girl decided she needed to take a full on nap and spread out across three seats.

I ended up having to sit in the open space at her feet and even though she continued to bump me with her feet, she never got up. She was pretend sleeping. I realized that the bench was a little uneven and every time I got up or sat down the whole thing shook, so I took great pleasure in doing that often so she could glare at me. I guess I was inconveniencing her.

While all these people were laying down (there was at least one more girl across three seats), all the seating spaces had filled up, and many people, including those with small children and senior citizens, couldn't find a place to sit. Thankfully, some decent people got up so they could sit down. For instance, at the head of the annoying girl kicking me was a family of three shoved into a single seat because she wouldn't sit up.

Finally, came this douchebag who took up an entire row of seats and went to sleep, only to be finally awakened by a courteous traveler who let him know the flight was boarding.

I'd like to point out that our flight was just past noon, it wasn't in the middle of the night. Nor was there a giant snowstorm that had displaced all these selfish, sleepy travelers for days so that they might actually be in need of rest. Nope - just your regular 2 hour flight to Portland out of LAX. All of this is annoying and rude in itself, but it happened on Christmas Eve. What the hell has happened to people?