I mean … my daughter plays violin. She doesn’t have a fancy one, but it cost about $400. I can book a flight from Seattle to LA or Salt Lake City on Alaska for less than $100. Nearly any instrument costs more than a plane ticket unless you’re headed somewhere international.
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United has a new “economy minus” fare (not the real name) where you only get one small carryon instead of the usual one carryon plus one “personal item”, and the carryon can only go under the seat not overhead. I would guess that some percentage of the people who buy these fares nonetheless try to bring carryons that are bigger than allowed with this fare. She was apparently traveling on one of these fares: maybe she didn’t realize what it was when she purchased it; maybe her employer purchased the ticket, and simply got the cheapest available fare without thinking about her need to carry the instrument; or maybe she thought she could get away with buying the cheap fare and then insisting on bringing the instrument with her, in the same way people often bring “carryon” bags that are way too big or too many in order to avoid paying fees (TSA doesn’t enforce size or number limits on carryon baggage in my experience). No way to know for sure which scenario is true with the information have.
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I don’t know how much violinists are paid, but I would think it entirely possible that a member of an orchestra may not be burning benjamins to light their cuban cigars.
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If you want to be popular, tailor your performance to your audience.
If you want to speak your mind, other people may disagree with you in large numbers.
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Hell, if someone notices you, you may even get a job offer!
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Because professional violinists don’t make a lot of money. A lot of them are playing with loaned or leased instruments. Someone else could have booked the ticket for her.
I do get your point. Did she understand the cheap ticket didn’t include storage? Could you keep it on your lap like you can a baby?
At the same time, this seems like a very easy thing to figure out a solution for. A small up fee for overhead use. An upgrade to the coach ticket? I mean I doubt this is the first time it has happened.
Har-de-har-har. 
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To paraphrase Constable Savage’s superior in the Met, “Would I be correct in supposing that Ms Correia has a dark complexion?”
priorities. It’s akin to attending a expensive university and subsisting on ramen, when you could get a real job, and eat a quality meal once in a while.
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The last few times I’ve searched for tickets, the cheap discount ones are just the ones that come up. Sure there’s a selection for “+$300 - First Class Luxury Seat” that you could choose, but there’s no obvious selection for “+$20 - Not A Victim Class - employees won’t assault you and try to steal or smash your stuff”. That should be implied even with the cheapest ticket.
I do agree with that. I have been guilty of sometimes not waiting until more info comes out and things get clarified. I appreciate your disagreement and challenging the pop perception. We need your viewpoint for perspective.
That said, I disagree with the idea that someone who gets a low-priced ticket (within the range that the airline chose to sell) deserves extra hassle.
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will they know the difference between the violin and viola
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When United Airlines has snatched the last one out of our cold dead hands.
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A few years back my wife and I met with a cello dealer, because we needed a full size cello for our growing son. This guy flew over from New Zealand to meet potential buyers and he showed us the hard shell case of one of the instruments with an obvious foot print embedded in it. The foot print had been acquired on the flight from NZ and he told us he would make an insurance claim.
Now seriously, the case had fragile stickers all over it. It was obviously a musical instrument, but some idiot stood on it.
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I didn’t imply that she was rich, but in the story it does say that the customer offered to pay her way in order to not check the violin. Had the ticketing agent been polite and let her know that her seat wouldnt allow her to bring the instrument on and that she could upgrade to a regular economy seat or business she could bring it along then the customer would have taken her up on it. Or at least she could have been presented the opportunity to rebook to a different flight on economy (not the basic economy she was on).
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Why would you? White people get shitty customer service too.
Yikes. It seems that all sorts of things can happen whilst taking a dump… murder, or Martin Luther’s ‘privy-time’ revelation, spurring him on toward Protestantism.
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Nero was a trainwreck of an emperor, but fiddles hadn’t been invented yet. 
Well, if by “lately” you mean “since the election and lately getting slightly better” then OK. But honestly there have always been certain topics where dogpiles inevitably happen, topics where people go in looking for someone to furiously upbraid. I avoid nearly all of those, and if I had better self-discipline I’d avoid them all.
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United’s war on passengers continues unabated. They need to test their employees for intelligence and empathy!
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There’s been some topics even where i got piled on, even when i made the disclosure in my comment that i was playing devil’s advocate and didn’t actually hold that opinion myself and some people were being really nitpicky and rude.
I take it with a grain of salt and try to be polite though. And if i’m done i just stop checking that comment thread. I think it sucks that i can’t have a constructive discussion on certain topics because some people just seem intent of tearing someone a new one.
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Best advice I’ve heard all day!
I have frequently been surprised by extreme rudeness and crudeness of expression shown by people who seemed to think they were arguing in favor of being respectful and nice to others.
It’s an odd thing, but as you say, best to move on and not let it get under one’s skin.
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That sort of reminds me of a surplus company that I do business with. They have a “hand select” option where they supposedly pick a nice one from the giant bin. I have always suspected that it works the opposite way, if you don’t pay for the hand select option, they pick out the crappiest one they have.
But with the airline, some people are going to end up sitting in the cheap seats, especially if the plane is full or overbooked. So the strategy of having a class of seats where you don’t get to use the overhead bins or the lavatories or whatever is a poor one, unless they have figured out a way to get people to sit in those seats and still pay the “convenience fee”.
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