Man on a plane

Passenger (without looking up from his book, which is entitled ‘A Short History of Decay’): yep, will do.

The passenger does not, however, do either of those things. What he does do is continue reading his book, which he is evidently engrossed in.

Five minutes later the flight attendant walks past him, scowling. One minute after that she is back.

Flight attendant (irritated): as I said, if you would lower your armrest and put your loose objects in the overhead compartment.

Passenger (still reading): yep, no problem.

The flight attendant waits by his seat this time, presumably expecting this will put a bit of pressure on the passenger to comply. But the passenger seems oblivious to her presence. After three maybe four minutes of waiting, she repeats her request, although it sounds more like an order now, an order barked by an irascible sergeant major. Then she explains, perhaps in an attempt to dial things down a bit, that this is for his safety and the safety of all his fellow passengers.

Finally, the passenger looks up from his book.

Passenger: look, he says, I cannot see how my armrest being up or down makes one iota of a difference to the safety of myself or anyone else. And the only so-called loose object I have is this here book, which I am absolutely not going to put in the overhead storage compartment.

The flight attendant is clearly unsure of the protocol in this situation. She stomps off and two minutes later returns with a flight attendant who is either very burly or his uniform several sizes too small. This flight attendant explains to the passenger that his wilful refusal to follow procedure is a breach of such and such law and that they, the airline presumably, have a clear responsibility to uphold that law. The passenger says he recognises no such law and doubts it even exists anyway. Furthermore, he adds, I am fairly certain you are neither obliged nor authorised to enforce such a law, if it were to exist, hypothetically speaking.

From here things spiral pretty quickly. The passenger is forcibly restrained and his book confiscated. The armrest is duly returned to the resting position. When the plane lands, the passenger is spirited away by a couple of armed security guards who look uncannily like armed thugs. He is held in a windowless, airless holding cell where he is tortured into confessing many crimes. He never regains his freedom and many years later dies of a venereal disease he almost certainly picked up from a particularly promiscuous former lover.