When my wife and I travel together, it’s standard practice for me to hold onto our boarding passes and other travel documents, and then present them at the appropriate times. This seems like a more efficient and streamlined approach than keeping them separately, although airport staff do their best to prove me wrong.

The scenario plays out like this. I hand two sets of boarding passes to the employee at the security line or the gate. As I’m handing over the documents, I say the phrase “two passengers”. And more often than not, they inspect my boarding pass and ignore my wife’s, and then act baffled when she doesn’t have a separate one in hand.

Why is this situation so hard to follow? Does nobody travel together anymore? Or am I using the wrong language to describe the situation? Perhaps I should be more direct and say something like: “There’s two boarding passes there, one for me and one for this woman behind me, who is my wife.” In any event, I believe a little bit of extra training could make airport staff more savvy when it comes to passengers traveling together. And of course, taking an extra half-second to listen to what the customer actually said wouldn’t hurt, either.