Last week, I had planned to travel from Boston to Tampa with a
connection in Philadelphia. I landed in Philadelphia without a problem
but an ice storm descended on the airport and, after five hours of our
flight's departure time being pushed back, the entire airport was closed
and all flights for that day were canceled.
When I arrived back at PHL the next day, two hours before the scheduled
departure of my flight home -- my trip to Tampa was, by this point,
called off entirely -- the airport was in chaos. Flights
were still being canceled, airport information displays were inaccurate
or switched off entirely and stranded travelers were everywhere. US
Airways had deactivated the automatic ticket machines and there were
thousands of people in scores of lines hoping for new tickets and
assistance.
But unlike the day before, we all knew that planes were theoretically
going to be leaving and that, stuck outside, we were not going to be on
them. People wanted boarding passes and they wanted them desperately.
But the lines were not moving and nobody -- or almost nobody -- was
going anywhere. Meanwhile, the four teams of TSA workers at the security
station were standing idly talking to themselves like attendants at a
light night gas station. The only people inside the terminal were those
that had slept there or flown in that morning.
After finding the end of a line, I asked someone what their line was
for. Nobody knew, but each hoped it lead to someone who would assist
with their particular problem. Usually they merely wanted to check in.
Several people I asked had been waiting in line for five hours that
morning only to find out that their line was, in fact, not a line at all
but merely a mass of people leading nowhere or simply dissolving into
other lines. Nobody knew what else to do so, I, like everyone else,
queued up and hoped for the best.
An impeccably dressed and obviously wealthy woman asked what I was in
line was for. I told her that I didn't know but, like everyone else,
hoped it would lead to a boarding pass. She wanted the same thing. She
asked if there was a separate queue for first class and I pointed out
that it seemed unlikely, in the chaos, that first class was getting
special treatment. I pointed out that I also had a first class ticket --
it was the only seat available when the harried agent rebooked me the
day before and I had not paid extra for this, but I did not tell her
this. She nodded to me in camaraderie. She stood pensively next to me for
five minutes and then fumbled for her wallet and ticket. She asked me
if I would hold her place in line and I agreed.
Five minutes later she reappeared with a boarding pass in her hand.
Surprised, I asked her how she had obtained it. She stated, quietly so
as not be overhead by the other would-be passengers but matter of
factly, that she'd found a baggage handler and flashed a twenty dollar
bill and her itinerary. She mentioned that the man she had paid had
left but that, "any of them will do it." Sure enough, I was in the
terminal less than ten minutes, and twenty dollars, later.
Despite growing up partially in the third world, I've only personally
bribed a person once before -- also in the United States. Like my
previous experience, I didn't feel good about buying my way out of what
seems to have, in fact, devolved into a racket. I have spent a lot of
time reflecting on the situation and my action in the last several days.
Everyone, or nearly everyone, outside the Philadelphia airport
terminal had twenty dollars and most of them would have happily paid it
to escape their predicament. The reason that most people did not pay off
baggage workers is not because they found it prohibitively distasteful,
although certainly some of them would have, but because most of us, and
I include myself, would have spent the whole day frustrated, desperate,
and standing line after line without even considering a bribe as an
option. While we know it on some intellectual, reflective level, the
vast majority of us do not, in practice, imagine that we can use money
as a way to manipulate people into special treatment. As a result, even
in situations like that morning in Philadelphia, I simply don't even
think of the twenty in my wallet as a way to solve my problem.
It's true that wealthy people, like the woman in line behind me, get
what they want because they can pay lots of money for products and
services. But it is not quite this simple. Some wealthy, powerful
people get what they want in part because they think to use money in
ways that the rest of us do not. Perhaps this is because this type of
spending is frequently not an option for most of us or, we tell
ourselves, perhaps even truthfully, because we find it distasteful and
immoral. The difference between being inside or outside the terminal
last Saturday was not about having or not having money. It was, in
fact, about having a particular relationship to money and, through
money, to other people. It was not about the value conferred by money
but about a set of values that can result from having it in abundance.
