Originally Posted by NewYorkMoscowFlyer64

I was recently accused of being a DYKWIA on a Delta Flight. I do not see it, but maybe I am wrong. Here are the facts --

A) Upon sitting down, I place several items into the pouch for holding SKY Magazine and safety cards (would have been the seat back in front of me, but I was in a bulkhead seat). The items I place there are my passport and ticket, my cell phone, and my eyeglasses hooked over the side of the pouch (one arm of the frame is in the pouch and the lenses and rest of the frame are draped on the side of this pouch).

B) After the small (plastic bag/no tray type) breakfast is served and consumed, I add into the center of the pouch, the apple (wrapped inside a plastic bag), and on top of the apple, the used OJ cup and inside that cup the very small used yogurt cup (with spoon and plastic wrap). The two cups and apple are dead smack in the center of the pouch.

C) I fall sleep for 4 hours.

D) I wake and discover that my eyeglasses are gone (as are the oj and yogurt cup and trash inside the small cup but the apple is not removed). I take the entire contents of the pouch and spread them on the floor. I find all my other personal objects, but no eyeglasses. I look underneath my seat, around my seat, in the pouch of the person next to me and under her seat. She asked me what happened, and I explained my eyeglasses were missing. After confirming that they are nowhere to be found around my seat, I go to the back of the plane to speak with the flight attendants and to go through the garbage to look for my eyeglasses.

E) I explain situation to flight attendants. At first they say that eyeglasses must be at my seat. I assure them they are not. They double check and speak with the neighboring passenger who confirms that my eyeglasses are missing and that I looked everywhere. I explain to the flight attendants that this is an extremely important situation because I cannot drive my car without my glasses, so i must have them by the time I get to my final destination.

F) We (me and two flight attendants) don plastic gloves and dive into the trash searching. In the 4th mini-dumpster searched, one of the flight attendants finds my eyeglasses (covered in OJ and yogurt, but intact). Flight attendants all are very apologetic for throwing away my eyeglasses and offer to clean them for me. I insist I will clean them and I also explain that we only narrowly averted a catastrophe and that no flight attendant should throw out items from a passenger who is sleeping without confirming that the items are trash or the passenger okays it. They are all apologetic, but I remain angry about the situation but grateful for the dumpster diving help.

G) A flight attendant comes to my seat and asks if I would accept skymiles for compensation for my inconvenience and asks me if 5,000 miles is okay it is the most she can give me. I say I do not know what is correct compensation, but i will not reject anything she wants to give me. I make clear I do not know if 5,000 miles is adequate compensation and I will decide later whether I view it as enough or not. I also tell her that all flight attendants should be notified not to throw out passengers belongings without checking with the passenger first.

H) At this point, the passenger one row behind me and across the aisle from me with whom there had been no interaction at all, rips into me and tells me I am acting inappropriately and I should accept the flight attendants apologies and offers of compensation and tell them all is okay. She says that everybody makes mistakes and that everybody understood why I was angry, but that I am being inappropriate in telling the flight attendant to tell all other flight attendants to not throw away passengers' belongings and making the point that I do not know if 5,000 miles is adequate compensation. I tell this busybody that I am in too angry a mood to decide what is adequate compensation for having to dig through the trash to get my eyeglasses and there is no reason I should have to decide now. She insists that my anger is being imposed on everybody around me because they have to witness the obviously very upset flight attendants groveling for my forgiveness and my rejection of them. She says I should just tell the flight attendants that all is forgiven and end the situation. She insists I am being way too mean since I did get my glasses back and everything is fine now.

I) The passenger seated next to me (a stranger too but also full witness to my exchanges with the flight attendants and the other passenger accusing me of creating a toxic atmosphere) says to me she does not agree with the passenger scolding me and I have every right to be as angry as I am.

I still have not decided whether I think 5k skymiles is adequate compensation. I also do not feel bad for telling the flight attendants that they should never throw away a passenger's personal belongings without checking with the passenger. While this situation could have been an understandable mistake if it were possible to mistake my eyeglasses for garbage or my eyeglasses had been near the garbage (empty cups) that were also in my pouch (but not near my glasses), that was not the case here. I also did not go after the flight attendants. All I did was try to get my glasses from the garbage and go back to my seat. The flight attendants came to me to ask to give me compensation for their mistake and asked me to forgive them and accept 5k as compensation. Once I had my glasses and told two separate flight attendants to make sure no other flight attendants throw away passengers personal belongings, the ONLY exchanges AT ALL were initiated by flight attendants and they were all excessive apologies and requests that I accept skymiles as compensation. At that point, all i did was not accept the apologies and also make clear that I was unsure if 5k miles was enough for the inconvenience suffered (the garbage was very gross to go through and I went through 1.5 dumpsters on my own).

So, was this a DYKWIA moment? If not that, was I a rude or crude passenger? By the way, the dumpster diving could have gone into the gross things passengers do thread, and I would have had to plead guilty, but if you needed your glasses as badly as I need mine, you would have been right there in the trash with me (the flight attendants volunteered to do it themselves instead of having me do it too, but the fact of the matter is I did not trust them at that point, and I wanted to make sure the trash was very thoroughly gone through). Fortunately, they were found before getting to the last several dumpsters.