These Confusingly Worded Delta Napkins Are Creeping People Out

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Shutterstock

From slow, snaking security lines to the race to squeeze your bag into the overhead bin before everyone else, there are enough reasons to feel a bit on-edge while flying these days. The last thing you need is for your airline to seemingly hint that the world would be a better place if you were dead. And yet, that's the message some Delta passengers recently received thanks to a confusingly worded cocktail napkin. 

While en-route to the Bahamas on a Delta Air Lines flight last week, Twitter user Natalie Walker did a double-take after reading what she thought to be a truly disturbing message printed on one of the cocktail napkins handed out during the drink service. The tagline in question, which actually reads "The world is better with you out in it" is shockingly easy to misread upon quick glance as "The world is better without you in it," which would be a truly upsetting thing for an airline to suggest to anyone, let alone someone currently flying five miles above the ground in one of its planes. 

Walker snapped a photo, pointing out how easily the peculiar phrasing and word placement could be misinterpreted and posted it to Twitter. 

The tweet quickly went viral, and other recent Delta passengers chimed in with their own photos of the napkin's seemingly ominous message. 

The encounter with the napkin was a "real Rorschach test for my mental state," Walker said in an interview, explaining that she'd been in a "depressive tailspin" the day before. 

In response to Walker's viral tweet, Delta conceded it saw her point, and shared a video that evokes the sentiment the napkin was aiming to convey.

Incredibly, this isn't even the first time this year that Delta has had a cocktail napkin brouhaha. Back in February, it was forced to apologized for serving drinks with creepy napkins -- co-branded with Coke -- that suggested passengers hit on one another by using them to share phone numbers. In small print, they read "Be a little old school. Write down your number and give it to your plane crush. You never know...” They were quickly removed. 

Ok, Delta, hear us out: What about sticking to plain napkins with literally nothing printed on them? No need to risk freaking people out when they're just trying to enjoy their bloody mary. 

h/tTravel & Leisure

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Joe McGauley is a senior writer for Thrillist. Follow him @jwmcgauley.