Author Archives: Geoffrey Graham

Business Idea: Airline Passenger Congeniality Score

Someone please take this ball and run with it:

I consider myself a reasonably congenial airline passenger. I travel light. I’m trim. I don’t smell too horrible. I’m not a chatterbox. Yet somehow, I always find myself seated next to the least congenial people in the world.

I would be grateful if someone would develop a service that enables passengers to rate the congeniality of their fellow travelers.

Over time, passengers would develop a congeniality score, and airlines could use that information to seat people according to their rating. Respectful and sanitary folks up front; discourteous, bag-laden, snot-rags in the back!

While an airline-agnostic rating would be ideal, I’m guessing there would be a lot of hurdles to get to that point. In the meantime, any single airline could easily launch its own version within its mobile app.

Such a rating would promote a culture of civility by making people more mindful of how they affect others.

What do you think? Crazy brilliant, or just plain crazy?

Update: As an alternative, everyone could simply read this post about travel etiquette. (HT @scottlenhart)

“Just”

If he would just add this feature, we can solve that problem.

If you just pick me up a little early, we’ll be able to get there in time for the previews.

Before you take off, please take care of just one more thing.

I’m presently trying to omit the word from my vocabulary, and that’s made me hyper-sensitive to others using it.

Just is passively presumptive. Most of the time I insert a just, I am really saying, “I know that this is probably a bigger deal than I want to acknowledge, so I’m tossing a just in there to make me feel better about asking it.”

Dropping it from my sentence changes the sentence’s meaning. I am no longer masking my request as something that’s inconsequential; I’m simply making a request, and leaving it open to the recipient of the request to assess the request’s relative difficulty. Also, by consciously dropping the just, I’m reminded to ask the follow up question, “How would that affect you?”

I’ve been trying to do this for a week or so, and I think it’s making me a better communicator—or if not better, then a little more mindful.

What are some other words like just?