Richard Seesel

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...]

I found the public treatment of Steven Slater as a hero to be puzzling: After all, if most of us were passengers on that airplane, we would not have appreciated the sort of erratic behavior that led to his dramatic exit. Granted, those employed in the service industry deal with erratic customer behavior every day...perhaps nowhere more than on a plane. But service associates should aspire to more "grace under pressure," especially where safety is involved. The customer may not always be right (in the case of the passenger who wouldn't stay in her seat), but training and professionalism should have been more apparent last week at JFK.