Take the Flying ARSE Test

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Are
you one of those jerks who make air travel miserable for the rest of us? Or have you suffered through a recent flight
with an unusually rude and self-absorbed passenger? If so, take my new 24-item test at www.flyingarse.com – do it with yourself or
another passenger in mind. It is finally
ready – and check-out the silly donkey with the little wings, our official
flying arse mascot.

Diego
over at Metacool has already taken
the test . As I would expect, he is
a pretty civilized passenger. He scored a “3” out of 24, very low (I scored a “4”).
I also have a more detailed
post on the test at my Harvard Online blog, The Working Life.

I want
to thank Sally Baron, Marina Park, a certain unnamed pilot for a major airline,
and newlywed Brienne Zimmer at Electric Pulp
for all their help with the test. I also
want to thank everyone who sent me suggestions about items to include in the
Flying ARSE and for telling me so many frightening and funny stories about outrageous
passenger behavior — see my earlier post on
Airline Arseholes for some crazy stories (the worst is Marissa’s story
about the “tuna fish groper”).

Please
let me know what you think of the test, suggest some additional items, and keep
the stories coming.

P.S. The original ARSE, the Asshole Rating
Self-Exam, keeps going strong, with about a 1000 people a week still completing
it – we are now at over 85,000 completions.

Comments

5 responses to “Take the Flying ARSE Test”

May 16, 2007

Pat McGee

I scored what I thought was an honest 2. So, when I got to the comment at the end which said that you didn’t believe me, well, I thought that wasn’t very nice.

Reply
May 17, 2007

sabrina

I agree with Pat McGee — I scored a 1, which I thought was honestly earned. (The only one I was slightly conflicted about was the nail-filing one — I might file my nails if I broke one, but I don’t have nail files in flight anymore, so I don’t.) I try to be uniformly polite to flight personnel, always put away my electronics when bidden, I almost never get involved in the “just pulled into the gate – must get off airplane!” madness and just wait until everyone else has cleared out of the way, and I only entertain fantasies of tripping unattended shrieking children as they run up and down the aisles. I don’t even lean my seat back, generally, because I find it annoying when people’s seats lean back into my space and I don’t want to cause irritation myself. I would never kick off my shoes; it’s tacky.
So yeah, it was a little sad to get to the end and get taunted for habitually trying to be polite.

Reply
May 17, 2007

Escape from Cubicle Nation

The flying arse assessment and other great book promotion ideas

My friend and favorite professor Bob Sutton, author the very popular book The No Asshole Rule, just released another fun assessment to test your arsehole-ness when traveling as an air passenger called The Flying Arse. The mainly humorous, but very

Reply
May 17, 2007

Bob Sutton

Sabrina and Pat,
I hear the feedback and apologize for the the teasing… I will change it and appreciate the comments.
Bob

Reply
May 18, 2007

Bob Sutton

Sabrina and Pat,
See the new and improved version — my wife also scored a 0 (I know this is true from flying with her, she is scary polite). Here is what it says now:
“O to 2 – If your answers are true, you are a flying angel, not a flying arse. I hope to see you on my next flight.”
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it.

Reply