Question for the group:

I was in a regular economy seat on a Delta A320 waiting to leave the gate for a 4-1/2 hour flight when I suddenly felt something pressing sharply into my kidney through the seat. I looked around to see the passenger behind me had placed his 1-liter bottle of Fiji water (the one with the squarish bottles) into his seat pocket such that its corner was deforming my lower seatback cushion enough to be uncomfortable for me to be sitting against it.

I politely informed him his water bottle was poking me in the back and asked if he could move it, to which he responded with the requisite blank stare and "Where am I supposed to put it? It's *my* seat pocket." I said yes, but it was poking into my back, and he declined to move it. Not wanting to get into a fight I just said "Fine." and turned around. When the FA came by for the final check I asked whether she could do anything, but she shrugged and said if he didn't want to move it there was nothing she could do.

So, I think it's reasonable that I made him aware of the problem and asked him to address it, and though obviously he wasn't making any effort to be considerate, I wasn't sure he was really under any obligation to. And the appeal to the FA as arbiter went nowhere - should she have done anything differently?

Was my problem really with Delta for having seats in which this could happen? It's never happened to me before so I don't know whether it's a common problem, or maybe there was something deficient about the seat, or maybe it was just a bad angle with an unusually shaped object and too bad for me. I think the other passenger deserves seat pocket autonomy, but I deserve a seat that doesn't have a hard bulge digging into my back.

Any thoughts?