25 Ways To Be The Worst Kind Of Travel Companion
Step one: clap when the plane lands.
If you know anything at all about traveling with friends, it’s that there’s always so much possibility involved. Where will you go? What will you eat? Whom will you meet? What manner of strange and curious creatures will you encounter? How many small, insufferable ways are there to get on each other’s nerves? The sky’s the limit — but here are 25 ideas to get you started.
- Clap when the plane lands
- Pull out all your money in public
- Conspicuous use of selfie stick
- Forget your alcohol limits and confirm all the worst American stereotypes
- Run everyone in your group ragged trying to See All The Sights
- Move at a snail’s pace everywhere you go because you Work Hard And Deserve To Relax
- Insist on visiting the wax museum/local McDonald’s/entire directory listing of historic European churches. Allow nobody to opt out.
- Take zero responsibility for learning the local language; rely on other people to do all the talking
- Take zero responsibility for learning the local language; attempt a crude anglicized version of the language instead that basically involves adding “o” to the end of every word
- Attempt to over-optimize every aspect of the trip; force your hangry friends to wait while you find WiFi so you can spend half an hour scouring the local Yelp! reviews
- Be hangry; take your hanger out on everyone else; act as though you’re the only one in the group with a stomach and physical needs
- Touch the art
- Take insensitive selfies with the grave and serious art
- Buy all the “traditional” garb in the souvenir shop; wear it all at once
- Insist on eating at the same chain restaurants you patronize all the time back home
- Insist on eating at restaurants with English menus
- Force everyone to wait while you risk certain death trying to get the perfect “chaotic traffic” shot for Instagram
- Force everyone to wait while you rearrange the contents of your three (??) suitcases to meet the weight limit; make everyone almost miss their flight because you have an unregulated shopping addiction
- Appoint yourself the Transportation Tsar; take no actual responsibility for keeping everyone on schedule
- Expect every international cafe you enter to understand your Starbucks order
- Disappear. Reappear. Disappear again, except for longer this time, so that everyone starts to worry
- Disappear and reappear because you have your own agenda. Still force everyone to wait around for you, drive you places and hold your stuff
- Complain every time you have to pay for something; secretly hoard the communal food supply in your room
- Engage with every street vendor trying to sell you overpriced crap; buy the overpriced crap and gradually force everyone else to make extra room in their suitcases
- End up in jail
Language lessons can help with a few of these.
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