Today is a travel day; I just arrived in Oakland, California. I flew Southwest and Southwest, you might know, presumably saves a few bucks by boarding passengers like cattle rather than assigning seats. In practice, that means that unless you want the to sit by the lavatory in the back of the plane, you must wait for your flight by standing in a long line. I had heard about Southwest’s hijinks before, but I had never, before today, experienced the melee firsthand.

There we were, divided into arbitrary A, B and C zones, waiting. The concourse door opened and with no small amount of jostling, the crowd surged forward in a mad rush.

It wasn’t all unpleasant, they did provide us silvery bags with salty airplane-shaped crackers AND standard airplane peanuts. With Southwest, it’s all about the customer…