Those are all obvious fixes, but I’m in awe at the subtle, nuanced sadism on display in an actual airport. Maybe the gate walls could be painted an obnoxious color that hurts your eyes if you look at it for too long. You could install a device that makes a low, irritating buzzing noise so that after 30 minutes, passengers get up for a stroll, even if they can’t put a finger on why. You could put an irritatingly bright light outside the window, and have it flash in unpredictable intervals. But they need to be uncomfortable enough that they’ll get up and move. Passenger waiting areas can’t be off-putting enough that they miss their flights, so you couldn’t put, say, man-eating tigers in the gate. Spending the morning here has me thinking about all the ways you could game-ify the airport wait for an Airport Tycoon game. I stayed at that table long enough to do the work I strictly had to do from a computer, then switched over to my phone for the rest. I’m 6’2”, and even I was reaching up to use my laptop, which means that basically anyone else who used it would have it even worse. But, it was too low in comparison to the table.

I walked to another gate later on, and the barstool there did have a footrest.

So, my legs just dangled, and I always felt like I was half-falling out of the seat. This was exactly what I was looking for… except there was no bar to rest my feet on. At the first gate, I was happy because there were elevated tables where I could plug my computer in and write. Furniture at each gate seems to be designed to be functional, but not remotely comfortable. I arrived hours ahead of my flight, so early that it didn’t have a gate, and I ended up wandering between waiting areas as a result.

I’m at the airport as I write this, and I’m noticing a slightly different, but parallel trend.

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