<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Gaucho100K:
The issue we all premium cabin pax have with the UA (and also AA) prison matrons has much less to do with their age, weight and appearance - but A LOT MORE with their crappy attitude, total lack of motivation and interest in customer satisfaction, and the worse moral in almost any service industry. I mean, its easier to get better service at a Fast Food joint (where people get minimum wage and less benefits than these crummy FA's get) than on a mayor US airline these days.
The answer is simple... implement a MERITOCRACY. The bad FA's get terminated, and you replace them with new staff that bring new blood to the organization.
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I couldn't agree more. Bad attitude and lack of motivation may correlate with the age of an FA to a certain degree, but this isn't always the case. I've experienced poor service from young and everything but enthusiastic FAs. On the other hand, I've received great service from FAs who were probably in their sixties. (Especially one LAX-LHR flight on AA in F comes to mind.)
...and of course there were plenty of cases where it was just the other way 'round.
andy