An employee of USAir with the last name of Gay boarded a USAir flight with a free travel voucher. Soon after he sat down, someone else came and claimed he had the same seat assignment, so Mr. Gay moved down to an empty seat. Soon after that the airplane began to fill up.

The rule with the USAir employee vouchers is that if a paying customer needs your seat, you have to surrender it. So when the flight became completely full and still more needed to get on, a flight attendant went to the original seat of Mr. Gay and said to the man now sitting there,

“Excuse me, are you Gay?" The man, somewhat stunned, said, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I am!"

The flight attendant said, “I m sorry, but you ll have to get off the plane. "

At this point Mr. Gay, who had been watching all of this, jumped up and said, “Excuse me, you’ve made a mistake – I'm Gay!"