【1989 Archives】

Traveling989 Archivesbe bad enough, but rude people can turn even a mediocre flight into an absolute nightmare.

Comedian Steve Hofstetter was traveling through LAX on Tuesday when he encountered a rude passenger who let her dog poop on the airport floor and left it there for someone else to clean up. Hofstetter shared his story of revenge, which he admits "may have gone too far," on both Facebook and Reddit.

"While walking to my gate at LAX, I noticed a woman whose dog was in the middle of [the airport] doing its business," Hofstetter wrote. "The woman was loudly face-timing [sic] with her back to the dog, so I assumed she didn’t notice. That was likely the thought shared by the gentleman who tried to get her attention."

When another person at the airport attempted to alert the woman that her dog just shat on the airport floor, she apparently shrugged it off.

He continued:

"Some people," she bellowed to her face-time companion with no hint of irony, "are just so damned rude."

Again, another person tried to stop her by asking if she was just going to leave it there. But the woman replied, "They have people for that.”

Hofstetter says he waited for some maintenance workers to clean up the poo, then headed to his gate for a plane destined for Tokyo.

"When I got to my gate, the woman was there, too," Hofstetter wrote. "Great – we were both going to Tokyo. When I travel abroad, I get embarrassed by other Americans doing things one hundred times less embarrassing than leaving animal feces on the floor of an airport. To make it worse, her dog was now barking at everyone who walked by."

It gets worse.

"While her dog barked at the world, the woman had moved from face-timing with no headphones to listening to music with no headphones," wrote Hofstetter. Anyone who has ever been anywhere in public knows how rude and infuriating this can be.

Instead of ignoring the woman, Hofstetter took a seat right next to her. He asked her if she was going to London, but she confirmed his suspicions that she was going to Tokyo.

"Then you better hurry," he told the woman. "That flight got moved to gate 53C. This is the flight to London."

"I figured I could give her a little moment of panic as payback for how terribly she was treating everyone," he explained. "I didn’t predict what would happen next. She grabbed her bags and her dog in a huff, and stormed out of the gate without even checking. She was so self-involved, she didn’t notice that the monitor at our gate still said Tokyo and almost everyone at the gate was Japanese."

"Based on her actions, she believed me that the fight had been moved, so she’s also an asshole for not thanking me," wrote Hofstetter.

He continued:

"Some people," I thought as I watched her rush away from the gate without stopping her, "are just so damned rude."

Hofstetter admits that he felt guilty knowing that there was no gate 53C, and that the woman was likely to berate the poor employee that had to break the news to her.

He wasn't certain if the woman and her barking poopy dog ever made it back before the plane departed, but he says that he didn't see her board and didn't hear her dog for the rest of the journey.

So did he go too far? Maybe, given the last detail shared.

"Her missing her flight was not my original intention, but it would be a fine punishment for her being so rude to everyone and making a low-paid stranger clean feces off the floor," Hofstetter wrote. "What makes me wonder if I went too far is the knowledge that Delta only has one flight to Tokyo each day. Whoops."

People were a little skeptical of the story, so Hofstetter shared some tweets which proved he did indeed travel from L.A. to Tokyo, including a picture of his plane ticket.

Moral of the story? Don't be rude and never make someone clean up your mess.