Please Help Me, I'm Very Puzzled.....

This entry is not photography related, but it is something that has been on my mind for the past week.

Here is the back-story. I was on a flight from Dallas to Charlotte, NC last Monday and as I was about to take my seat upon boarding a flight attendant asked me if I would mind switching my seat so that a father could sit next to his teenage son who was on crutches. The meant that I went from a standard cramped middle seat to an aisle exit row seat with TONS of legroom. I agreed and took my seat without anything else of interest happening. I slept through most of the flight and then at the end of the flight as I was passing the flight attendant, she pulled me aside and told me that I was "absolutely the nicest, kindest passenger" she had met in her 20+ years of service on several airlines. Aside from being a bit puzzled, I was flattered, thanked her, and headed on to catch my connecting flight.



Here is my issue with this situation. I swapped seats and thought nothing of it other than I got the better end of the swap. I did nothing else the entire flight to attract attention either positively or negatively. Yet by simply swapping seats, I made a hugely positive impression. In my mind ( and I assume most people's) I did nothing at all remarkable on this flight, yet someone with more than 20 years experience in this industry thought it was praise worthy. My question for those of you out in "blogland" is:



Has the general public become so routinely rude/distant/disagreeable/unpleasant (choose your word here) that veterans of the service industry are impressed by a most pedestrian thing such as swapping a seat to keep a family together on a flight?



Please feel free to comment and reply to this, as I am genuinely interested in what others are thinking here. (By the way, I am assuming the flight attendant had no ulterior motives in complementing me unless she mistook me for an airline exec...LOL).


Thanks for reading!