On being first — how to deal with this urgency that we all have to be the first to leave
I was on a Gulf Air flight from Bahrain to Chennai in the early 2000’s. It was my first flight from the Gulf and I had no idea what to expect. There were s lot of Indian diaspora who had boarded in Bahrain who were reveling in the hospitality on the flight much like Hanuman and the Vanaras were helping themselves to fruit and drink in Madhuvanam. The flight barely landed in Chennai when almost the entire plane stood up. It was almost like a well choreographed military drill, the sound of the simultaneous unbuckling of hundreds of seatbelts was absolutely fascinating. The flight attendants tried in vain to get all the passengers to be seated while the flight was still taxiing. Maybe it was the hurry to set foot on their homeland.
If you have ever worked in a skyscraper you have probably experienced this in the morning, at lunch time or in the evening when it’s time for you to leave. The elevators are usually packed. We are hoping it will stop at our floor first. But then we see people piling into the elevator pressing the number of floors below us. We are exasperated and wonder why they couldn’t have been on the next elevator. We are in a hurry to get to our destination and don’t want to wait for anyone.
Every year when we go to a Fourth of July fireworks, high school graduation, a concert venue or a sports venue we experience the same phenomenon. At the end of the event there is a mad rush to our cars. It is an absolute chaos we each think that we can get the better of the other. We see cars in all different orientations blocking the movement of all of us for much longer than it should.
One other funny incident comes to my mind when I think of this. It was in the mid 2000’s, I used to live in the west suburbs of Chicago and take the METRA downtown to work. There were several people who did this, so the parking lot at the Rte 59 station was filled with vehicles. In the evening several took the express train back and almost the entire train got off at Rte 59. It would take us twenty minutes to get out of the parking lot sometimes. So there were always a few sprinters who jumped of the train and ran to their cars so they could be the first ones to leave and get home sooner than the rest of us. One Friday I decided to become a sprinter. I was one of the first cars to leave. On the way back there were a couple of stop signs to clear and sometimes we were backed up a few minutes. So some of us had figured out a shortcut through a corner building to avoid a stop sign. It was so common to use that route that it had become normal for us. That Friday, by habit even though I was one of the first ones out of the lot that day I chose to use that route. I was the first car using the route that day. I entered the corner building and immediately got pulled over by a traffic cop who had me park on the side. The building management had gotten frustrated with the train riders behaviors and had called in the cops to enforce. That day the cop pulled over another fifty cars after me till the lot was completely filled. He then went about disposing almost everyone after giving them a warning. He came to my car last and told me that since I was in the first car he had to write me a ticket. I finally get home a hour and a half later, so much for sprinting and getting out of the lot early that day.
In the 21st century, we need to start thinking of creative solutions to address this as increasingly these situations seem to abound in our daily lives. Imagine an airplane that opens like a capsule so every row can get off down a stairway out of the plane simultaneously. What if the new sky scrapers had individual elevator pods serving us so it will get us straight to our destination. Imagine future parking garages designed so you can enter and leave straight from your lane or your floor. Or maybe each floor exits on to a different road to de-bottleneck. Wouldn’t our life become more fun as we can all relax and not feel frustrated by situations beyond our control. Let’s all join to wish for that reality to dawn on us soon.
