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-   -   Do flight attendants really hate us? (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travelbuzz/1244769-do-flight-attendants-really-hate-us.html)

the810 Aug 8, 2011 8:06 am

So your arguments are that FA can have bad day, they may had to deal with rude passengers and are tired of long travel. OK, but tell me one thing:

FAs on some airlines doesn't have bad days? FAs on some airlines doesn't have to deal with rude passengers? FAs on some airlines aren't tired of long travel? Because FAs on some airlines provide great service, are always smiling and willing to help.

Why one FA tells me "we'll have drink service in 20 minutes" and another "Sure, I'll be right back" when I want bottle of water?

My answer is: FAs on some airlines are well-trained to provide great customer service (what is part of their job) and are either required by management to do so or simply realize who pays them.

BearX220 Aug 8, 2011 9:48 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbieRunner (Post 16879555)
Any industry that has to deal with the "General Public" is a tough industry to work in.... Service industries are not easy.... Flight Attendants have to deal with all sorts of weird personalities.

With great respect... so what? Name me a job that isn't difficult these days. These people aren't EMTs, or Navy SEALs, or small business owners struggling to figure out where next month's grocery money is coming from. They're not pouring asphalt in the blazing sun or lifting heavy objects. They're not running anything, or making hard strategic decisions.

FAs ride around in airplanes a few days a month, hack up ice blocks, and dole out Diet Cokes. Then they hide out behind the galley curtain and get paid to read People magazine and do Sudokus. They may not be getting wealthy but that wasn't in the brochure to start with. Meanwhile they enjoy relatively terrific job security. Judging from the freedom many apparently feel to ignore, lie to, or abuse their customers, they don't worry too much about getting fired. FAs have the luxury of undermining their management and mistreating their customers without penalties. Most workers who do only one of the above find themselves on the street within minutes.

In an era of 18 percent real unemployment these people might have the grace to cut the caterwauling about how awful their jobs are. As Mom used to say, it's harder when there's none.

As for the "safety officer" rap, the whole "We're here to save your a@@, not kiss it" line... spare me. One in several thousand flights has a safety issue requiring an FA to do anything more complicated than arm or disarm the doors. Most will complete their careers without ever being so challenged. And when emergencies occur, many FAs fold like chocolate teapots; aviation records are full of accounts of FAs freezing up, weeping, collapsing, etc. at the one moment in their careers their safety training matters.

I don't know if there's another class of workers in America that displays more attitude with less justification.

darthbimmer Aug 8, 2011 10:48 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by the810 (Post 16880439)
FAs on some airlines doesn't have bad days? FAs on some airlines doesn't have to deal with rude passengers? FAs on some airlines aren't tired of long travel? Because FAs on some airlines provide great service, are always smiling and willing to help.

Totally agree that FAs on some airlines routinely provide better service than others. I connect this to the point JerryFF made upthread: employees who are treated well by management serve their customers well, employees who are treated poorly struggle. The "some airlines" where I find weaker service all have histories of management/labor strife, significant reductions in benefits, bankruptcies that wiped out retirement plans, etc. The airlines with reliably better service, in the USA at least, are those with recent histories of growth and relative cooperation between management and labor.

RichMSN Aug 8, 2011 11:24 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbieRunner (Post 16879555)
Any industry that has to deal with the "General Public" is a tough industry to work in.
Service industries are not easy.

I worked my way through college in retail dealing with hordes of people with thousands of different personalities, demands, and attitudes.
After a while, I became jaded. I started to see most people as demanding, self-centered humanoids that wanted to vent on the poor schmuck in the store.
There seems to be an underlying tone of "The Customer is ALWAYS Right" no matter if the customer has spent 29 cents for a pack of chewing gum, or 299 dollars for an airline flight. Some customers will want preferential treatment for that, and demand high expectations and servitude from those they deem "should deliver" on the payment that was made.

Flight Attendants have to deal with all sorts of weird personalities. Not everyone is well dressed, upscale, and level-headed. Not everyone is rational. I once witnessed a passenger go off on a flight attendant because he asked the man to pull down his window shade for a movie. The passenger demanded his name, and stated he would "Have his job" when he got done with him. If you deal with that nonsense for a few years, you are going to lose faith sooner or later in human common decency and begin to see your passengers as a pain in the behind. And you may get "numb" to a human interaction. This may come off as "hating" the passengers, but IMO, it's simply a human response to being treated harshly by passengers over time. Surely, some may have brought attitudes into the job with them, but for the most part, humans tend to become products of their environment. Being crammed into a small aluminum tube for thousands of hours a year dealing with the general public is not exactly a relaxing job.

I'd probably last two weeks (and I'm being generous with my estimation) if I had to be a FA. Dealing with the general public is very difficult.

I usually just smile at FAs and do what they ask of me. And I rarely ask anything of them. I hope I never have to ask them to help me in an emergency. If I do, I'll be glad they are there for me. :)

Most of us have to deal with customers in our jobs. It's a requirement to provide good customer service in my job and to be responsive to my customers needs / wants.

balima Aug 8, 2011 4:52 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by mapleg (Post 16868776)
Last time I looked a doctor earned a lot more than a FA. Hardly a realistic comparison.

(I seem to have read that among professions dentists are often the unhappiest--not sure if that is true or not)

No, real comparison is to a teacher. Low pay scale, parents expecting that their little rug rat is a genius and should be treated like the second coming.
Nobody wants to be in a teacher's lunch room, especially one week before a break or vacation. I would imagine FA are like that too.

milty908 Aug 8, 2011 5:15 pm

Foreign cabin crew are so much better than domestic...

I think the recruitment and training has something to do with it. Foreign crews have to do same day turnarounds also. I don't know if they're like WN crews hopping all over the country in short 1-2 flights the entire day, but they still fly 2-3 hour regionals all day and maintain a basic customer service standard.

BearX220 Aug 8, 2011 11:03 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by balima (Post 16884050)
No, real comparison is to a teacher. Low pay scale, parents expecting that their little rug rat is a genius and should be treated like the second coming. Nobody wants to be in a teacher's lunch room, especially one week before a break or vacation. I would imagine FA are like that too.

The average teacher in US public school systems makes $60k or $70k a year for 180 days' work and is virtually impossible to fire. Even more ironclad deals than FAs. Both are pretty cush situations considering the amount of work and lack of leadership involved.

Ancien Maestro Aug 9, 2011 1:06 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by milty908 (Post 16884154)
Foreign cabin crew are so much better than domestic...

I think the recruitment and training has something to do with it. Foreign crews have to do same day turnarounds also. I don't know if they're like WN crews hopping all over the country in short 1-2 flights the entire day, but they still fly 2-3 hour regionals all day and maintain a basic customer service standard.

Perhaps cultural work ethics, results in better customer service..

JoeBagodonuts Aug 9, 2011 2:44 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by BearX220 (Post 16885762)
The average teacher in US public school systems makes $60k or $70k a year for 180 days' work and is virtually impossible to fire. Even more ironclad deals than FAs. Both are pretty cush situations considering the amount of work and lack of leadership involved.

how do you figure this?

the typical work week, 50 weeks @ 5 days per week would equal 250 days and that doesn't include holidays being removed.

school at least where I live is 180 days of actual school days. That excludes all the days the teachers have to be there when the students are not there. Where I live the median teachers salary for all grades K-12 is ~$58K.

How is this more iron clad than an FA?

What exactly does the FA earn (median?), what are the FA's median hours per months?

How is a teachers job cush? You have 20-30~ kids per classroom. Its your job to teach, control and make sure that each kid is up to some bizarre no child left behind law (another topic all together) and then you are supposed to do all the grading and planning on your time. You pay for your own supplies or a great deal of them. You deal with parents as stated above, trouble making kids and a school board made up of people so far removed from reality they have no clue what goes on in the schools and then have to deal with what the county supervisors think you should be doing and they are further removed from reality than the school board. You are asked to do more with less each year.

Teachers have minimum education standards and often have post graduate degrees, what do FA's need?

Lets see what could I live with less of in my lifetime

FA's or Teachers

FA's hands down

No I'm not a teacher nor have I ever worked in the school system

RobbieRunner Aug 9, 2011 4:07 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by RichMSN (Post 16881797)
Most of us have to deal with customers in our jobs. It's a requirement to provide good customer service in my job and to be responsive to my customers needs / wants.

Do you have to deal with, say, 300 NEW customers in a confined space EVERY DAY, after day after day?

I don't. Thank the almighty. ;)

BadgerBoi Aug 9, 2011 5:32 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbieRunner (Post 16886507)
Do you have to deal with, say, 300 NEW customers in a confined space EVERY DAY, after day after day?

I don't. Thank the almighty. ;)

I don't either, thank god.

Is it a surprise to the FA that s/he has, say, 300 new customers in a confined space every day, day after day? If they can't deal with it then it's time for a career change.

RobbieRunner Aug 9, 2011 5:48 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by BadgerBoi (Post 16886725)
I don't either, thank god.

Is it a surprise to the FA that s/he has, say, 300 new customers in a confined space every day, day after day? If they can't deal with it then it's time for a career change.

Wasn't commenting on that. Was commenting on why it may appear they "hate us", as the thread was originally posted.

Point being that the rigors of the job may cause some to appear unfriendly. That's an occupational hazard.

I really can't imagine myself doing that job. I guess it's a living for some. Not my cup of tea.

Speaking of careers, off to work. G'day. :)

BadgerBoi Aug 9, 2011 6:09 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by RobbieRunner (Post 16886776)
Wasn't commenting on that. Was commenting on why it may appear they "hate us", as the thread was originally posted.

Point being that the rigors of the job may cause some to appear unfriendly. That's an occupational hazard.

I really can't imagine myself doing that job. I guess it's a living for some. Not my cup of tea.

Speaking of careers, off to work. G'day. :)

My point basically was if they can't pull off appearing friendly (or at worst not unfriendly) then they really shouldn't be in that job.

Athena53 Aug 9, 2011 7:01 am

I'll believe that FAs are there primarily for my safety when the airlines start hiring registered nurses to be FAs- that was a criterion when they originally started using FAs on passenger flights.

One point in their defense: the FA who got in deep trouble for deploying the emergency slide on a plane to get the heck out mentioned that so many people who boarded were already exhausted and frazzled by the airport experience- the TSA lines, not enough seats in the gate area, blaring TVs, beeping carts, repetitive announcements. So the FAs are already dealing with a lot of pent-up anger that they did nothing to create.

I believe that the biggest problem among the legacy airlines in North America is the union structure which treats any FA who goes to another airline as a newbie- even if they have 20 years of previous experience. It means that most of them will grimly hang onto their current job, no matter how much they hate it, because of the perks of seniority. And it shows.

BearX220 Aug 9, 2011 9:09 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeBagodonuts (Post 16886358)
What exactly does the FA earn (median?), what are the FA's median hours per months?

There's a survey of FA salaries here. It's compiled from anonymously reported data. AA reported median is about $46k, DL about $43k. Not as much as a public school teacher, but less - make that no - education required.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeBagodonuts
How is a teachers job cush?

Twelve weeks' paid summer vacation plus massive weeks-long holiday breaks, so I shed no tears for teachers that "have to be there when the students are not there." Most of us "have to be there" 50 weeks a year, not 28 or 29. Also, you can do a very bad job and nothing bad happens to you. As with FAs, good teachers hurt themselves by supporting a union system that protects their incompetent, corrupt or stupid colleagues.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoeBagodonuts
No I'm not a teacher nor have I ever worked in the school system.

Nor me, but I have a smart kid in an (allegedly good) public school system who has been exposed to, and hurt by, crashingly bad teachers as well as a few excellent ones. And they all disappear at every opportunity; the last week or two of the school year the classrooms are top-heavy with substitutes, as so many regular teachers abandon their students to take booked cruises, etc. The rules for parents are pretty much the same as for airline passengers: sit down, shut up, attempt no contact. As with FAs there is no way to address incompetence and the teachers hold most of the political cards.

Like flight attendants, teachers have craftily built up a public image heavy on martyrdom and sanctity, with the intent of neutralizing all criticism and protecting the entire class of employees, no matter how bad they are. The FA's "We are here primarily for your safety" or "We're here to save your a@@, not kiss it" is the teacher's "If you can read this, thank a teacher," etc.

Yet neither job rewards good performance or penalizes terrible performance, and neither stands for excellence. The airline customer experience in the US has degenerated to a grim and stressful level, and the children processed indifferently by public schools get dumber every year.


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