Originally Posted by
lenyoga
This post, as well as another here, as well as my personal experiences completely proves the repeated comments that it is an offense that could lead to termination to be completely false. To those who have suggested that notion, without knowing the answer, you have added nothing to this thread but blatent misinformation.
Regarding the continued obnoxious personal attacks that in no way attempt to answer the question, this website reminds me of Redditt, where anonymity allows trolls devoid of class or human behavioral ethics to post with impunity. Its truly sad that so many people here have nothing better to do in their lives than to spend their time in such a manner.
As I will no longer expect anyone on this thread to have the maturity it takes to answer a question without resorting to horribly negative insults, attacks and insinuations, I will simply end my participation in this thread the way I started it. By saying that although I expect no free favors ever, since in my personal experience it has never been uncommon for a pursor to gift a bottle of wine, and was told the opposite story by those recent pursors which clearly meant they were lying, I wondered if Emirates had made recent inventory control changes the pursers did not want to discuss. Truly amazing how that simple question turned into four pages of childish foolishness.
Were there to be anyone who did want to know, I am also now able to answer my own question. When I discussed this issue with the purser during my flight back from DXB-JFK, he assured me they have not made any such change and thought it strange the other pursers made those decisions. As we were getting ready to land he handed me another cloth Emirates bag and said he hoped to welcome me back soon. Inside was a bottle of Dom, which I did not ask for either directly or indirectly.
This thread really is reminiscent of that other infamous thread on this forum and the SPG thread, complete with the OP coming back with both barrels!
Wonder if we'll go to 100 pages...
To dispense with the oblique references to my comments about firing - it is categorically, 100% true, that crew giving items on board the aircraft to people to take away, without good reason, could, in your exact words, "lead to termination".
I feel absolutely sure that I know a lot more front-line EK staff, of all levels, than you, all of whom have confirmed to me the same thing. Whether you believe me, is of course, a different matter, but I will simply say I have absolutely no motivation to misinform or lie about something so trivial (to me).
Whether a purser can get away with giving away bottles (i.e. having an adequate explanation come audit time or whether he/she is reported by another member of staff) is a completely different matter.
As others have said, sometimes it happens by way of service recovery, or the passenger is extremely valued. Giving a bottle of Hennessy Paradis to an iO member is clearly different to any old standard F revenue passenger. It is clear you feel there is a hierarchy of passengers, given your statement "Important to note that these flights, as with all my EK fligths are full paid F flights, no upgrades or rewards." - unfortunately for you, it seems that you are not quite far enough up the hierarchy of EK customers to warrant wines to take away as a matter of course.
An iO member spends literally millions of dollars with EK - by EKs own service standards, they bend over backwards for iOs. I understand if you weren't aware that
chinatraderjmr is an iO with EK, but the simple point is this - it is a request that is completely up to the discretion of the Purser, who needs a very good reason to do it. Just because "these flights, as with all my EK fligths are full paid F flights, no upgrades or rewards", is not a sufficiently good reason to do so.
Why do you think that pursers that have given you bottles of wine to take away have done so in a discreet manner, instead of every passenger being given a bottle of a wine (or something) as an F travel gift?
As to:
By saying that although I expect no free favors ever, since in my personal experience it has never been uncommon for a pursor to gift a bottle of wine, and was told the opposite story by those recent pursors which clearly meant they were lying, I wondered if Emirates had made recent inventory control changes the pursers did not want to discuss.
I find it difficult to see how you could make a case that those pursers were lying. Perhaps they were not giving you the real reason they did not wish to give you a bottle (they simply decided not to), but they indicated this by deflection, not by lying. This is a critical skill in the hospitality industry and happens on an hourly basis all over the world.
You yourself said in post 1:
(first saying if it wasn't into DXB they would, second saying if it had been into DXB they would have)
Neither of those pursers gave you a factual statement about policy. They are indicating the personal choice they would have made, if not for the sector you were travelling on. It would only be a lie if they could be proved to not give you the wine had the sectors been in the opposite direction, for each individual purser, as we have covered the point that gifting bottles of wine is entirely discretionary and needs a very, very good reason to do so.
In your defensiveness I think you have conflated your subconscious belief of entitlement to wine because of "your personal experience that it has never been uncommon for a pursor [sic] to gift a bottle of wine" with actual EK policy - hence your question on this forum about whether EK has changed their incorrectly presupposed-by-you previous policy of free wine on demand to take home.
That was never the case, and this has been explained to you here.
The tangent about your wine-tasting escapade is of course a nice diversion. In the relatively free confines of Flyertalk - a discussion and comment board - you run the risk of anything you post being commented on, or being highlighted for being risible. The beauty of online forums such as these is that it gives you lots of perspectives you might not have considered when posting your story or comments - it is up to the reader how he/she wishes to process those new perspectives. It goes with the territory I'm afraid.
If you want a crowd of yes-men giving you moral support and encouragement for all of your actions, I think you would be better off ensconced in the F cabin of your preferred airline where the echo chamber is happy to bolster your perceptions of the world and all of its petty injustices
