Joan Treistman

Steven Slater: Lunatic or Working-Class Hero?

August 16, 2010

FROM RETAILWIRE:
A dramatic meltdown by a JetBlue flight attendant has sparked a discussion around people's frustrations with their jobs in a time of seemingly endless cutbacks. What lessons did you take from Steven Slater's meltdown and the public's reaction to it?      [more...]

There would be little if any sympathy, much less support, if a salesperson left their job in an uproar. I can't equate the service provided by retail employees and flight attendants.

Finding an attentive (forget pro-active) retail employee is very difficult. On the other hand we have very demanding expectations of flight attendants. And when we watch them over the course of a flight or two or hundreds we can observe the various challenges they meet and how they deal with them.

The support for Steven Slater is linked to our assumptions of what his work life has been these last 20 something years. No matter what the final revelations show us we know that 99.9% of the time he was on the plane serving all the customers (the good, the bad, the ugly) with a smile and a positive attitude. And we know he was trained to do just that.

Not for one minute do I believe retailers train their sales people to support their customers in a similar fashion. In that regard retailers are less likely to see their employees walk off their jobs frustrated that they have given so much to the customer with so little coming back to them. Is that a good thing?