Monopoly

He sat confidently, ready to play. It was the aspect of his day which made it all worth while, every tenth encounter would contain opportunity, and every third of those would be truly satisfying. The beauty was that he had nothing to lose, he was protected, there was the high desk between him and the danger, behind him was a large sign warning people that his company would not tolerate him being abused in any way. The object of the game; make them do things they don't want to.

I approached and placed my case on the weighing scale, and with a smile and a "hi" handed over three passports. He nodded to himself, this could be a good one. It transpired that I had misunderstood something on the website, he wanted thirty quid in excess baggage charges despite our carrying less than our allowance, (our return tickets had come to less than £50 each). We redistrubuted the contents of our bags. He now wanted only 5 quid but he also wanted our booking reference. I have used this carrier many times and in the past my passport (and maybe my credit card) had been enough. Now he wanted me to go to the sales desk to get the code and rejoin the back of the queue. I remained fairly calm, suggesting that I would be prepared to leave my position in the queue if he called security. Gemma was less happy and wanted his name, he refused and so she called him a "scaredy cat". Eventually that issue was resolved. He then announced that he didn't want any more money from us but that "as you have been so uncooperative, we would not like to see you here again".

The end result, as far as I can make out, was that everybody in the queue had experienced a ten minute delay, Ryan Air had made no more money, we had not enjoyed the nicest start to our trip, but "nameless man", after adjusting himself in his seat, running his finger round the inside of his collar and stretching out his lower jaw, was feeling good and ready for the next passenger.