OskiBear

I don't agree with this. I work in an industry that has been severely impacted by the economy. I've taken a 40%+ pay cut over the last 3 years and went from a staff of 11 to 3. No less work for all of to do. We just do it and try to be pleasant about it

Do I wish I was paid more? Do I wish my working conditions were better? You bet!

At the same time, I know I can leave (although opportunities are limited) or they can ask me to leave. I'm grateful for my job and my paycheck but I am tired and stressed at times. I don't take it out on my peers and I certainly wouldn't take it out in customers.

I do understand the challenges the current conditions have imposed on everyone but that's no excuse for rude and bad behavior. I have really great crews and being friendly wih them has generally resulted in a positive experience but there are a few sourpusses out there that should find another line of work because they are spoiling it for the customer and their coworkers who are doing a good job

karung99

FA and other people who are in Customer Service industry, need to be able to make the customer pleasant.

There is no way they should vent out the anger or frustration with paying customers.

cl.lurker

^^

....as a point of reference: Delta recently opened 1,000 positions for FA's; apparently, 85,000 applied for the job.

http://www.ajc.com/business/delta-hi...85-683179.html

So... it seems quite a few are willing to take their jobs....

agarc

I wasn't disputing what the FAs job should entail. ??

And I just don't see this as being unique to United...unless United was known for having awesome intl service in recent years and we're suddenly seeing something new... I mean, I love the airline but, c'mon!

shinbal

Couldn't agree with you more on this post! I'm SO tired of window .... And some of these FAs act like it's "Failure to obey crew direction" if you don't shut the shade. I had three FA's in C ask me to close my shade, and finally told them, politely, that I was feeling harassed. If I want to stare at the ocean or clouds, it's as much my right as sleeping or watching a movie is the right of someone else.

I will never disagree that FA's have safety responsibilities; but so many use it as an excuse to do any service work.

PTahCha

There's never a need for FAs to bark unless it's shouting out evac instructions.

weero

This is probably not the forum to ask what that does actually mean ???
You really mean SA or just SQ?

The only thing I really hate about all NRT crews is that they love to blather on for hours on the PA. The first 2 hours ex. NRT you can always write off for the mindless babbling of at least one crewmember .
I wished they would spend less time with the PA button and more on the drinks trolley...

seaflyguy

You know, I didn't, but even if I had, smileys are ambiguous. "Don't take whatever precedes this seriously" is just one of a number of possible interpretations. So it's understandable that more than one of us was confused by it.

Speaking as someone who has used more than his share of smileys in his life, I'm kinda sorta starting to hate them.

seaflyguy

So what's the answer to all this?

It's tempting to blame unionized workforces and seniority-based contracts, but DL FAs aren't unionized, and I haven't been overly impressed by them, whereas AS FAs are unionized, and they seem much friendlier than their mainline legacy carrier counterparts. So it can't be just the union / seniority issue. What else is at play? How can the mainlines -- UA, DL, AA -- address this problem? I'm sure there are lots of people with a good insider understanding of this situation who can comment.

Ochowie

I would like to think that a mystery shopper system with actual impact on an employee's employment status would be a good first step. I think one of the reasons that such a program has not been instituted is that even with such recommendations it would still be very hard to terminate an underperforming employee in a unionized environment. Maybe a good experiment would be to implement such a policy (if it doesn't exist) in the example of the non-unionized DL workers and see if there is a positive change.