I Sat Next to Satan’s Spawn on a Redeye. Here’s What I learned:

Seven hours seated next to every stereotype of a shitty passenger, only mashed into one person.

“Oh, so in your world, you can just reserve overhead bin space?”

I’d just gotten comfortably situated in my basic economy middle seat — seatbelt on, oversized backpack securely jammed beneath my feet — when I witnessed her come in with a vengeance, spitting venom at an elderly gentleman.

The gentleman had just switched seats with a young couple and their already blubbering baby, in an attempt to spare the sanity of nearby passengers, such as myself. During the switch, he’d removed his bags and planned to re-situate them in a new overhead bin space, across the aisle from his assigned seat.

Pending this move, he’d placed his backpack atop a seat adjacent to my row, so the overhead bin space above appeared unoccupied… though it was not. It was intended for the kind, elderly gentleman amidst a seat change, who happened to be an integral part of an initiative to prevent plaguing the walls of our Boeing 777 with shrieks and shits.

But she didn’t know this.

In her world, the gentleman had claimed overhead bin space that wasn’t rightfully his. In her world…