Flight Attendant Rant
 

Flying today on an A319 and seated in 1F. Throughout taxi and takeoff the FA in the jump seat closer to the door was loudly voicing her opinion of all things wrong with UA to her colleague. I felt bad that she was so upset but don't think that passengers should have had to listen to it. Some of the highlights:
*Repeatedly saying that Jeff was an [expletive] idiot and that he ruined UA.
*Complaining that PS would no longer be out of JFK and that EWR was in NJ and that no one wants to go there. She also said that B6 and DL are making $ on the route so UA was stupid to pull out.
*Discussing Goose Bay and how bad that was.
*Talking about the new menu as "the garbage we shove in front of them"
*Discussing the "Chairman's Route" and how someone should go to jail for that.
*Talking about how the aircraft are not properly maintained and that they look bad.
And the list went on and on and on. The biggest surprises for me were the amount of profanity and the number of times she called out the CEO. The skies around the jumpseat were anything but friendly this AM.

Sounds like an FT plant within the ranks of the FA's

Well at least she was accurate with her complaints :-:

She is really angry. I feel bad for her because she doesn't seem like she enjoys working at UA.

I find this rather shocking. And I don't mean in a Captain Renault way. Before the merger, I recall some talk like this about Glenn (remember the Glenn's Gotta Go wrist bands?). And early in the merger one or two FAs would sigh when Jeff came on the video. But over the past year, this seems to have gone away completely. I usually try to talk to FAs and kid them about Jeff or how the merger is going, but they have been highly professional in their responses.

So a discussion like this that appears to be intentionally audible to passengers is way out of the norm in my (somewhat limited) experiences with UA this year. I have had some bad FAs, but nothing like that recently.

Sad.

I agree with you, blueman2. I've heard passing comments through the years but most of it has quieted down. This was a solid 10-15 minutes of not coming up for air.

I would have been saying "amen sweetie" if I was in your seat, but I was in 2B on an AA flight yesterday ;)

I have heard similar comments from pmUA FAs but the discussions/complaints were always expressed quietly in private conversations. I don't think that airing such complaints so that many passengers can hear them is appropriate, even of they are justified.

Cabin staff have been complaining about management forever -- I remember visiting the rear galley in decades past and stumbling into kvetch-sessions about Wolf, Greenwald, you name it. But they used to quit when I walked in. If they're now doing it about Smisek at top volume in the jump seat and don't care who hears, a big bridge has been crossed. If management doesn't care what happens to the customers or what they think any more, why should the employees?

Pure trash she should be fired or why doesn't she just quit

Are their skills that bad that they can't get another job ?

I was in F yesterday on a A320 BOS-ORD flight that was delayed over 3 hours due to WX (we did not leave BOS till 2300). Our FA in F could not have been more enthusiastic, service-oriented and nicer (and she was sUA), so it's all a roll of the dice ...

Be that as it may, she sounds very angry and should look for work elsewhere. It's unprofessional to discuss that within earshot of passengers.

What kind of customer wants to hear a trolley dolly complain on a flight?

Of course FAs, or any other employees, should not speak that way about their employers in public. And, in a way, I do feel sorry for the older ones. The UA they joined is not the same as it was when they joined it. The status accorded to an FA is not what it was. The whole industry is not what it was when they started. The pay is not what it would have been either. But they are not unique in this - so many people went into industries which seemed really promising, only to find that life has moved on and left them behind. My wife is a book publisher and reckons she's lucky - there's just enough life in it until she retires.

However, in some ways they are lucky. When they started, they would not have expected to have been employed as FAs in their fifties or sixties (or seventies judging by some of them). So they've held on to the job for longer than they could have expected, they've dodged the lay-offs and now they get the pick of the rosters.

And, in the overall scheme of things, being an FA for UA is not markedly worse than doing the same job at other US airlines.

In short, they should zip it.