there is a two bag limit for a reason / if you want to choose your seat, fly southwest

oh the excitement of being back on an airplane after a 11 day break.

couple of comments.

a. each passenger is allowed 2 items. period. not 3, not 2.5, not 4. not only is there a finite amount of overhead space in the plane, no one wants to wait for you to gather up your myriad of bags as you try to deplane. case in point. woman in front of me on the dallas leg had one computer bag, one purse, one giant shopping bag and a medium-sized tote bag. necessary? probably not. if it's not an option to bring a larger bag and check said bag, may i suggest federal express?

b. when flying commerically, sit in the seat you are assigned. if someone else is seated in your assigned seat, notify a flight attendant immediately. DO NOT try to remedy the issue yourself. case in point. someone else was assigned to my seat. instead of figuring out what happened, she and her husband huffed off to the back of the plane. (please note, there are 48 seats in said aircraft). what ensued was lots of, "oh, i'm sorry. i was supposed to be in 12B, but someone else is there ... yada, yada, yada." after being kicked out of many seats, the huffy couple ended up moving to the front of the plane, which caused the flight attendent to lose count and we were delayed. interesting side note, apparently i was not registered on the flight, hence the double booking of 12B. after ignoring the "will passenger Meyers please hit the call button" message, a gate agent came to 12B to check my boarding pass. seems i wasn't in the system, regardless of the fact that it was the second leg of a trip, i printed the boarding pass the day before and the ticket was scanned by another agent. if the flight attendant had been notified at the first sign of drama, we would not have been late. net time loss: 15 minutes. on an hour flight, that is a lot.