I can't agree more. I was once catching a flight, went to my gate and found no one there and the flight status monitors saying "Cancelled". I couldn't find an agent at any desk, so went back out of security to check-in to figure out what was going on. The agent proceeded to act like I was the biggest idiot in the world for leaving the gate because "we don't control those boards, your flight isn't cancelled, the gate was changed". So I had to run back through security to barely catch my flight.

Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.

> Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shops. They'll start talking to you with specialized vocabulary and won't give you the time of day if you don't know exactly what they're talking about. Yet, I brought my bike to the bike shop because I'm not an expert bike mechanic. Funny enough, I couldn't find a bike shop that wasn't like this so with the help of youtube I do all my own bike work now.

Ugh, the industry still needs to do so much work to this end. There are good shops out there, fwiw, but the elitism is real. Totally counterproductive for a means of conveyance that is so elegantly classless (in the positive, egalitarian sense).

I had an older/seemingly quite skilled bike mechanic look at my bike, who was happy to deal with my vague gestures about squeaky doohickeys and answer any questions. They knew enough to know what normal people don’t know, though, and how to get from there to what matters.

I think the sort of lingo-centric scoffing “expertise” is a defensive posture that near-novices tend to take, to scare off further questions. You see it in every field, and we should all be careful not to replicate it in our own.

> Another place I experience this phenomenon is bike shop

This is my personal favorite story about bike shops (from circa 2008).

At the time, I both lived and worked in Manhattan. I was lucky that biking was an option for commuting but the only bike I had was a 20 year old Giant Acapulco (not a fancy bike at all).

I worked down in Tribeca and one day on the way to work my shifters just broke. Thankfully, there was a bike shop near work so I dropped of the bike in the morning and said I would be back that afternoon.

Fast forward to the afternoon and I come in to pick up my bike (as I assumed it was an easy fix and they would just charge me). The repair counter guy looks at my ticket, checks something and says he has to go get the manager. This is somewhat confusing as this was a simple fix or repair.

The manager comes out and several of the staff are arrayed behind him. Now I'm a mixture of concerned and fascinated as to what could possibly have happened to my bike given this deployment of bike shop personnel.

Manager: "Sir, the repair for your shifters is going to cost $40"

Me: "Ok, is there an issue with that?"

Manager: "Well, a quality used bike would cost you about $60 so we weren't sure how you would want us to proceed"

(I should add that the staff behind him all seemed as though they were holding their breath here).

Me: "That's cool. I'm good with the repair"

Everyone visibly relaxed, the manager turned around, pointed at one guy, then turned back to me and said "Your bike will be ready tomorrow."

My only thought on this level of nervousness is due to the shop being near a lot of investment bank offices that had a very type A guys who were also into bike racing. I myself dealt with a lot of those folks so it's not hard to imagine the shop staff assuming I would be that way too.

sadly, the best way to get data on flights it to use the airlines app - not anything you'd find at the airport

also, it's easiest to use that same app for the boarding pass too these days

once I printed them out (with the provided pdf) thinking it would be easier, the printed paper didn't work and they said I HAD to install and use the app or go back to a kiosk and use one of their printouts and lose my place in line...)

The guy working at the TSA isn't there because they have a strong grasp on the theory of mind.

Oh the last minute gate change is always ridiculous. I never find it happens at really busy airports either. It's always at the airports that have around 40 gates but only around 6 flights an hour.