Years back, I used to do a great deal of consumer/business arbitration, beginning as a gullible neophyte fresh from a training class. I didn't have many cases under my belt before becoming unalterably convinced that, no matter the nature of the dispute, both sides had colored their accounts to put their individual positions in the best light.

Of course, I'm unlikely to be objective here. Broad-shouldered, I'm the victim of serial bumpers from FAs to carts to repeat lav visitors on nearly every flight (since I insist on aisle seats). I've witnessed Caspar Milquetoast pax turn into ravening loonies over imagined slights. Meanwhile, I've also observed the best and most efficient of FAs to "lose it" in circumstances almost laughable in their inconsequence and irrelevance.

Along with a collective condition best term "skin-thinning" and the blossoming of a society in which common and conventional courtesy is disappearing far faster than the earth warms or oil reserves decrease, "over-reaction" has become the watchword (along with a general tendency to take ourselves, our actions others and their actions too seriously).