FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - How do you handle grumpy Flight Attendants ?
Old Feb 8, 2018 | 11:07 pm
  #37  
davie355
 
Join Date: Nov 2013
Posts: 4,374
Originally Posted by Proudelitist
Depends on the level of grumpy. I kind of get it. The public sucks, and the job isn't easy. I can forgive them alot.
I do not forgive. When I tell people this they always assume I've never worked a public-facing job, because if I had, I'd "understand what it's like."

Well, I have indeed worked a public facing job. 7pm to 3am for a year. Bonus: thanks to the time of my shift, many of my customers were intoxicated. Now I have even less forgiveness for public-facing employees because my takeaway was that if you do your job correctly like I did - with tact, patience, and respect for each customer even if they were disrespectful - then even the most demanding and unreasonable customers can be tamed.

The public doesn't suck. If you're a service provider who thinks this, then you either have an extremely unfortunate clientele, or you in fact are not competent in providing service.

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Also, please do not say the Flight Attendant job "isn't easy."

Raising a kid isn't easy.
Open-heart surgery isn't easy.
Writing a screenplay isn't easy.
Graduating from Ranger School isn't easy.
Building deep neural networks for self-driving cars isn't easy.

The job of a flight attendant is easy. And yes I know what I am talking about because I have personally attended new hire FA training at a major US airline.

I've never personally worked as an FA, that's true, but given the vast majority of FAs are not grumpy, I have no tolerance for those who are. I'll still say please and thank you with my drink orders, but I'm not going to bend over backwards to try to sympathize with how "the public sucks" or "the job isn't easy," because I have bent over sufficiently backwards to conclude the public does not suck and the job is in fact easy.
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