One of the most comedic, frustratingly annoying experiences I have nearly every week is watching the boarding process on Southwest Airlines. If you’re not familiar with how it works, you’re going to be very confused.
Southwest doesn’t assign seats. It will assign a boarding number when you check into your flight. The boarding numbers come in three groups, A, B, and C. If you’re a frequent traveler like I am, pay for automatic check in, or buy a Business Select fare, you get in the A group, usually in numbers 16 to 60. Once the A group goes, then B and C follow. They key of course is getting a number as close to A-1 as possible. That allows you to have a greater choice of seats. God help you if you’re in the C group. You won’t find a space for your gigantic carry-on steamer trunk in the overhead bins and you’ll be stuck in the dreaded middle seat, probably between a huge fat guy and a mom with a lap child.
One area of seats that always seems to LOOK open is the very first row, the bulkhead seats. It’s open for a reason. You can’t store any bags in front of you or under the seat. Everything has to go in the overhead bins. Since it’s usually old people who sit there because they do the pre-board, the bins are already full with purses, canes, and medical devices. For the unsuspecting novice traveler, they walk on the plane with their “C” boarding group and jump in, thinking they got the easy score. Then they’re told they can’t sit there, as there is no space for their luggage. Dejected, they slink back to the steerage section of the plane doomed to a middle seat. This happens at least three times per flight I’m on. The easy score is usually too good to be true.
Not to be a pessimist, but if things look too good to be true, they probably are. That empty parking spot at the front of the row at the mall on Black Friday will be a handicapped spot. The empty seat on the bus will have a homeless whino with bad B.O. sitting next to it. I once saw a guy at the bathroom in the BWI airport cut in front of the line to head into the ONLY empty stall. A second later he rushed out when he discovered there was diarrhea all over the walls and floor. Not sure how that happened.
Rather than wait for something to miraculously happen to you, why not go out of your way to create awesome opportunities? Rather than check in two hours before your Southwest flight and HOPE you get a good seat, check in right at the 24-hour mark? Instead of hoping for that great seat, open parking spot, or clean bathroom stall, plan better and get an earlier start? The same goes for opportunities at work. Rather than hope for a promotion, do the hard work to prepare for it. Instead of hoping you’ll be noticed, go out of your way to get noticed.
Nothing good in life will routinely fall into your lap. The easy score is often deceptive. There is a quote, attributed to everyone from Plato to Henry Ford that says “The harder I work, the more luck I seem to find.” If that’s true, there is no easy score. It’s all the result of preparation and hard, diligent work.
What are you prepared to do?