The universe has a way of being merciless. Attempting to be kind for selfish reasons can result in a situation worse than the starting one. Let me explain.<\/p>\n
My flight from Las Vegas back to Raleigh had a connection in Newark. Upon arrival at the Newark airport the Continental reps asked for volunteers to be bumped to a later flight–the plane from Newark to Raleigh had been overbooked–and volunteers would be compensated for their time and trouble with a four-hundred dollar travel voucher.<\/p>\n
Sign me up! Four-hundred dollars, to wait in the Newark airport another hour and a half? I had nothing to do when I returned to Raleigh, I could easily wait in the airport.<\/p>\n
I volunteered, filled out some paperwork, and the agent told me that they would, more than likely, need my seat. No worries, I said.<\/p>\n
The plane boarded. They do a final call. One person hasn’t boarded the plane yet. His name goes out across the loudspeakers. Nothing.<\/p>\n
The agent tells me that I can go ahead and board the plane, which works out because my luggage would already have been aboard. My original seat, obviously, has been filled, but I’ll now have a window seat at the back of the plane. I resign myself to not getting the travel voucher.<\/p>\n
And then, as I walk to the back of the plane, I see the one open seat. And the man sitting next to me, he’s so big he takes up half of my seat.<\/p>\n
Alas! I spend the flight sandwiched between the guy and window. All because I tried to do something nice for entirely selfish reasons.<\/p>\n
Let that be a lesson to you all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The universe has a way of being merciless. Attempting to be kind for selfish reasons can result in a situation worse than the starting one. Let me explain. My flight from Las Vegas back to Raleigh had a connection in Newark. Upon arrival at the Newark airport the Continental reps asked for volunteers to beContinue reading “On Trying to Be Nice”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[4093],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}