This is your gentle, creepy reminder that there's no guaranteeing how clean the public spaces you're entering actually are.
Singer Lily Allen was unfortunately reminded of this on a recent transatlantic flight.
During her Miss Me? podcast, the singer reflected on her recent travels, including a flight where she encountered an unwelcome companion: someone else's toenail clippings all over her seat, as well as in her cup holder.
Flights aren't necessarily known for their cleanliness, but this obviously had her and her podcast cohost, Miquita Oliver, cringing in disgust.
Allen reflected:
"When I flew back here, to England from New York, it was on a different airline than I normally go on, and I noticed that there was a toenail in the bit next to the thing, and then I noticed another one, and then I kept seeing them."
To make the situation worse, the flight attendants could not place her in a different seat and did not help her clean up the mess.
"I asked the guy, I was like, 'Can I move seats because somebody's been clipping their f**king toenails in the seat?'"
"And he was like, 'I'm sorry, we're completely fully booked,' 'oversubscribed,' or whatever."
"And I was like, 'Can I have a sick bag and some wipes then, so I can clean these toenails up?"
Cleaning up someone else's debris shouldn't have been part of the singer's flight plans, but for this, the flight attendant accommodated her.
"He came back with two wipes and a sick bag, and I cleaned up the toenails that I had in my field of vision, shall we say."
"Then I went to put them, the sick bag, down in the storage bin or whatever, once it was sealed, folded up, and then I saw, in the cupholder, another three toenails."
"I was like, 'Whoever was sitting in this seat was taking the f**king piss!'"
"Anyway, I cleaned up those too, I went to sleep, and when I woke up, the manager of the whole flight was looming over me, and she was like, 'I'm sorry, madam,' and I basically got comped for the flight. They gave me enough airmiles to buy a whole new flight."
It didn't seem likely that Allen would be booking that flight anytime soon, though.
"Toenails! What is wrong with people, seriously?"
You can watch the conversation here:
That fans were disgusted by what happened to Allen would be an understatement.
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It's understandable that Allen couldn't be moved to another seat if the flight was fully booked and attended, but it's alarming that she was expected to clean up someone else's mess, especially when it came from someone else's body and was undeniably riddled with germs.
It was nice to comp the flight and essentially comp another, but having to clean up someone else's toenails likely wouldn't make the airline one of Allen's top five choices in the future.
