tfung

well, keeping this report short, as I said before, I'm starting to get bored for United's domestic service and every flight just seems about the same to me.

Anyways, the BOS-IAD segment was uneventful, on a 727 and serving only drinks and pretzel mix. But I'm starting to get a bad habit of arriving at the airport REALLY late these days. I barely made the flight, even though the cab driver was going about 100mph down masspike helping me get to the airport on time.

The IAD-SJC was quite a dissapointment. The plane was a A320 which had the new seats. I've also noticed that the recline on the A320 was a lot more than on the boeing planes, and this one had the empower ports working. Although the flight was less than half fulll and we arrived half an hour early, the service was TERRIBLE. The purser on the flight who was serviing F class was an African American male, and I'm not trying to be racist or anything, but he's the laziest and rudest FA I have ever had on United. He never came around to refill drinks, and every time I asked him for a refill, he just grunted. The main course in the dinner wasn't even heated properly, and my vegetables that came with the chicken was cold. He didn't bother to serve any bread, and didn't give dressing for the salad until I asked for it. The hot fudge with the ice-cream sundae was just fudge - it wasn't heated so it was just a sludge of chocolate next to the ice-cream. I couldn't even bother to stay up to endure that kind of service, so I just slept right after. I did overhear that he was on doing my return flight tomorrow, and I promptly called in the 1K desk when I got to SJC to change my flight just to avoid having him again. Anyways, that was the flight in a nutshell. Here's the menu:

To Begin
Smoked salmon and dill cream cheese filled crêpe
Mesclun green and balsamic vinaigrette

Mesclun greens with shiitake and chanterelle mushrooms
Balsamic vinaigrette or honey Dijon dressing

Main Course
Chicago-style filet mignon with shiitake butter cream sauce
Roasted red potatoes and baby bok choy

Herbed breast of chicken with a chanterelle mushroom sauce
Penne pasta with Parmesan cheese and a vegetable medley

Fillet of grouper with a crabmeat topping
Oyster beurre blanc, oven-roasted potatoes and asparagus

Dessert
Ice cream sundae - Ben & Jerry's vanilla and coffee ice cream
Hot fudge sauce, wafer and whipped cream

Wines
Caliterra Maipo Valley
Côtes-du-Rhône Grenache Château D'Orsan

[This message has been edited by tfung (edited 07-22-2001).]

zrs70

How disgusting of you. "I'm not trying to be racist or anything...." Why mention the color of skin. Had the person been white, would you have said, "The person was a white male"? I rather doubt it.

I am hurt by this kind of post.

Marco

I don't think tfung was being racist. He was just pointing out that the F/A was an african american.

MilesDependent

Mmm... I guess it is more uncommon to see an african-american male F/A, as opposed to, say, a white female F/A. But clearly this does not affect the level of service of the flight.

Interestingly, I've never seen anyone get upset from people talking about Asian F/As on the intra-Asia UA flights. How is it different??

MD

opus17

To describe a crew as "Singapore-based" speaks to their training and culture. To start identifying American FA's by race (and associating them with negative behavior) seems racist to me.



[This message has been edited by opus17 (edited 07-22-2001).]

tfung

zrs70: Sorry if I offended you or anyone else. I had meant to say that it was unusual to have a male African American purser as I've never had one before. However, it also turned out to be one of the worst experiences I've had. I should have kept them as two seperate thoughts instead of turning it into one. Don't get me wrong - I've had many other African American FAs before, but not as the purser, and have received excellent service from them. So I was just kinda suprised and shocked at this.
I just typed this up as how I would if I was talking, and that phrase just came up in my head when I was typing and got mixed in there.. Once again, sorry if I offended anyone

Westcoaster

Edited after reading tfung's response. tfung and I posted at the same time.

[This message has been edited by Westcoaster (edited 07-22-2001).]

JS

Gee, P.C. Police, thanks for ruining another thread. First it's "Gay Rights are more important than combating racism" (makes no sense to me), and now racism consists of merely a racial identification.

For crying out loud, a Trip Report is SUPPOSED to be a description of a flight that includes more details than what you normally find in a travel story.

That is, usually travel stories focus on the destination, not the flight itself. Trip Reports on FlyerTalk is a place where you can fill in as much detail as you like regarding the flight, for those of us who happen to like that sort of thing.

Calling tfung racist for the mere mention of the purser's race makes YOU the racist, not tfung.

I think tfung deserves an apology for being labelled a racist.

pshuang

I disagree. tfung has already replied that it was not his intention to associate his two thoughts (it was unusual to have an African-American male as a flight attendant; it was one of the worst flight service he has experienced) into one. And I'm certainly willing to take his word with respect to his intent.

But selective disclosure of somebody's race can definitely contribute toward racist tendencies. You see this phenomenon all the time, including in journalism, where somebody's blackness is worthy of reporting as part of the story, but somebody's English, or French, or Irish, or Italian heritage wouldn't have been considered worth mentioning. (But back at the turn of the century, the last two out of those four might have been considered newsworthy.)


[This message has been edited by pshuang (edited 07-22-2001).]

zrs70

Indeed, I DID over-react, and I am sorry. Unfortunately, I deal with these issues all the time.

In all fairness, JS, I never labelled Tfung racist.

Oh, and how does it make a person racist if he/ she responds to an individual's actions or comments? I was responding to Tfung. I was not creating a stereotype.

But JS, you are right. I shouldn't jump to conculsions. That makes me no better a person that anyone else.

Marco

Yes you did over-react. I appreciate tfung's efforts to give us every single detail of the flights he takes. I think that's all his post was trying to achieve nothing more than that.

JS

zrs70, my comments weren't directed to anyone in particular. My apologies if it appeared otherwise.

Carfield

Thanks tfung for another excellent trip report! I have read your previous reports on AA as well. They are very good as well. I am just shock to find out that AA only bothers to serve one meal on the six hours flight to ANC. Even AS manages to serve a meal and a snack.

I honestly don't think tfung is racist. He is just giving us facts and I think we are possibly a bit more sensitive these days.

I hope this post won't prevent tfung from writing us these excellent trip reports again!

Carfield

KevinB

People react to threads based on what they read... And words are important, no matter what the "anti-PC" Police seem to think...

Amazing the backlash that people get for pointing out what can be interpreted as insulting, racist or homophobic... As if the person who is pointing it out has done something wrong...

Gee I wish the 50's were back when America was just moms and dads and the kids eating TV dinners while watching Howdy Doody... NOT

[This message has been edited by KevinB (edited 07-23-2001).]

KevinB

And what exactly was so great about the other thread before I and other Gay people "ruined" it?

A diatribe about how United was "attacking" the Boy Scouts should have been left alone?

I guess you have the final say on what's OK and what isn't?

Geez.