Southwest Airlines

Southwest is the best airline in the world. It gives you all the experience of riding a city bus at 300 times the cost. You show up at your gate early, because they tell you to be early; it doesn’t matter that they won't be there anywhere near your scheduled departure time. Apparently one of their cost-cutting measures is getting rid of all the clocks in the cockpit.

So then they crowd you onto the plane, and you better hope you can push up to the front of that line, because seating is first come, first serve. It doesn't matter where you sit though, because you're going to be sitting with a class of people that used to be restricted to walking whenever they wanted to get somewhere until "cheap" airlines like Southwest came along. These are people whose last bath was their baptism. You're going to end up crushed between a man so fat, when he sits, he rips the fabric of space-time, and an elderly woman with a broken hearing aid who is going to shout at you about her cats for the next 12 hours.

And it will take 12 hours. It doesn't matter where you go on Southwest, every journey takes the longest possible amount of time. You're flying from Portland to Sacramento, they're going to route you through Reno, and Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, and Phoenix, and Albuquerque, then back up to Reno, then to Seattle, before they come back to Portland and tell you to get off. And you're so frazzled that you think, "What the hell, I must be here," and you get off, and when you realize your mistake and turn around to get back on the plane they close the door and take off without you. So you're running down the tarmac yelling at them, and you know they see you because you can see them laughing and pointing, and they slow down a little to give you a glimmer of hope... and then they speed up and they're gone. There's a special level of hell reserved for bus drivers and Southwest airline pilots.

And speaking of Southwest, a couple years ago they announced that they were going to start charging double fare for fat people because they take up more than one seat. Does that mean they'll offer reduced fares to little people if they're willing to stow themselves safely in the overhead compartment? Seems only fair...