A LinkedIn Travel 'Hack' Suggests You Just Board Whenever You Want
This is just downright fiendish behavior, if we're being honest.
LinkedIn is a social media platform with a singular use: to slither through the careerism of your industry as you try to survive the hellscape work economy. You post your wins, connect with coworkers, and browse the jobs board to determine if people are getting paid more than you for the job you're currently doing. But, where there is the opportunity to have an audience, there are charlatans seeking one. Look no further than the LinkedIn influencers, typically executives and wanna-be executives who post their virtuous 5 am start time and how working 90 hours per week is actually fundamental to "wellness."
The latest pseudo-lifehack from one such LinkedIn poster concerns boarding groups at the airport. In a now viral and widely ridiculed post, a LinkedIn poster shared his top travel advice, based on a busy year of travel. A lot of it was your typical "optimize your time" late stage capitalism malarkey, birthed from the vicious belief that our bodies and existence are products meant to be constantly refined for peak performance. Tips like "don't sit at your gate, walk around while waiting to board" and talking down about both sitting in economy and public transportation made up the majority of the eight points.
But aside from the overall faux-wellness tips, this LinkedIn poster's second point was what really rankled people. "Board in Group 1, no matter your group. 99% of the time they don't say anything. Worst case they tell you to wait, then you're first when they call your actual group," the tip reads.
Comments on the LinkedIn post included some haunting agreements from similarly gimmicky careerists. "The group boarding is a farce," one person wrote.
Look, you can wake up at 5 am and push your body to the point of unrealistic productivity so that you can make some gray-faced rich guy even more money all you want. I can't make you see the sweet benefits of waking slowly and gently with this one life we have on Earth. That choice is a prison of your own misery. However, I can tell you that ignoring boarding group order is simply rude and unacceptable, and advice you should completely reject.
A screenshot of the post made its way to Reddit, where there was ample lack of tolerance for such a rude tip.
"Those people deserve to fly Spirit," one Redditor wrote.
"Anyone who does this is the worst type of person," said another person.
"I have seen Delta gate agents deny boarding to passengers who try to cut in line," another Redditor added.
Boarding groups are intended to keep some semblance of order. It means smoothly being seated in your section, not spending 10 or 15 minutes waiting on the ramp before getting on the plane, and not having to climb over people as you get to your seat. When you try to jump boarding groups, it slows down the process for everyone and puts additional work on the shoulders of the gate agents. It's a matter of accessibility, safety, and courtesy to your fellow flyers and airline workers.
If you're fixated on taking advice from LinkedIn posters and achieving some status of "super worker" and you desperately want to board first, put your money where your clout chasing is, and invest in one of those first class or priority boarding seats. Then, you won't be subject to the satisfied smirks from the people who watched you get turned away by the gate agent.
This is just another way that people have totally lost the plot when it comes to behaving decently while flying.
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