The flipside of this is the inanity of Southwest Airlines employees with respect to boarding the plane:

As is well known, Southwest doesn't have assigned seats, so the choice of seating is determined by boarding order, with earlier people getting more choices. People want to avoid middle seats, so the natural tendency of later boarders on crowded flights is to keep walking as far as necessary toward the back of the cabin in the hope of finding and empty aisle or window seat. For some inexplicable reason, however, Southwest flight attendants and gate managers actively discourage this, wanting people instead to take the first middle seat they find. The all-too-predictable result is a traffic jam in the aisle and the jetway, as the line continually stops to wait for the leading person to stow their luggage and take their seat.

It should be obvious that, regardless of how crowded the flight is, boarding efficiency is maximized by having each passenger go as far to the back of the cabin as possible, to allow the line to keep moving forward. Is this goal somehow less important than that of teaching people not to vainly expect aisle or window seats?