Going Jetblue

At 8 am this morning I left my gym after two hours of training and walked to the corner, as I do most mornings, and went into the grocery store to buy eggwhites and solid white tuna, as I do most mornings. I stopped at the newspaper stand at the bottom of the escalator to look at the covers of the newspapers, something I do NOT do most mornings – newspapers are a bore; there is never anything good in them. Indeed, today there was nothing good in them.

The man on the cover of all the papers is nothing good.

Oh, I suppose he might be a nice man, he might have some nice qualities, he might be a lot of things. What I read about in the New York Post that I bought, though, is nothing good.

A flight attendant for Jetblue Airlines had a meltdown, threw a tantrum, deployed the emergency hatch/slide and flew, flew, flew away to his home, where he began engaging in coital activities that were interrupted by (what was reported as ) about fifty cops who carted him off to jail, where he will be charged with reckless endangerment and some other things. The news of his tantrum went viral and everyone everywhere has something to say about it – usually something encouraging his acquittal and his future as a public figure.

This person has a different opinion on the matter.

I think he should be fired from his job. I think he should be charged with any and every charge that the law allows and he should be held accountable for his actions.

I am sure, at this time, that people are asking why I feel this way. It is because of the simple fact that what he did was wrong. He had no business throwing that tantrum and he certainly had no business deploying the slide and causing all that trouble at JFK airport. Since September Eleventh airports have become a nightmarish experience for anyone wishing to travel; the slightest upset can cause delays in the departures (and, hence, arrivals) of every flight in a given airport, creating a domino effect that can stretch across the country. The amount of time it took to undo the bedlam he caused must have affected the business at JFK and all the other airports doing business in and out of JFK. And he was an airline employee who would know that. Also, imagine the fright he caused the passengers on that plane. Even though it was on the ground, it must have been upsetting for people to suddenly hear a stream of profanity coming over the PA system, followed by the jolt of activity as he rushed the emergency door, knocking over an airline pilot, and set off that emergency escape route. It had to be scary for those people; people who were on the ground but inside an enclosed vehicle, capable of reacting adversely at any moment. And he was an employee of the airline who would know that. His actions had consequences of which he had to be aware; yet he committed them anyway. He had time to think about what he was doing – it was no spur of the moment kind of thing. It was not an act of passion – it was pre meditated…and committed with humour, otherwise he would not have stopped to get his bags and a beer before causing the airport and the airline a lot of trouble and expense, all for his enjoyment.

Look. Everyone has troubles at work. Everyone has disgruntled days. Everyone has to deal with something, put up with someone or just suck up and suffer at work. Maybe not every day; but everyone does have to, at some point, just deal with it. Had this person kept his wits about him and done the smart thing, he would have gone to the air marshal or one of the pilots and said “I am having some real trouble with a belligerent passenger who has struck me on the head with a blunt object.” He would have had the passenger removed from the plane. Hell, he could have claimed concussion and sued – this is America, after all: you can sue somebody if they brush up against you on a subway car – and you can win. Instead of doing things by the book and by the brain, he reacted with histrionics that just leave a bad, distasteful mark on Jetblue, the flight attendant profession, gays and alcoholics (oh, yes, every story has mentioned that the man is a homosexual in recovery). What do YOU think people are going to remember about this story? A drunk fag went berserk, made a scene, grabbed a beer and flitted off to get laid. Yeah. That’s what people will remember about this. I’ll tell you something else, too, the facts of his personal life were all over the story I read in the paper I read; but they were also everywhere else on the internet. I was amazed by how much of the information in the stories was gathered by looking at his various online profiles. Hell, reporters and police don’t even have to interview people and witnesses anymore; just go to a person’s Facebook page – it’s all there.

I have friends who are flight attendants. They have to put up with the bad, the irritable, the ill behaved; and they do it with grace and style. Why should this petulant pansy be allowed to just create this trouble in the name of flight attendants everywhere, and then be rewarded by people who champion his own bad behaviour? He shouldn’t. He should be disciplined and made an example of. I am sympathetic to anyone in the service industry. I treat them all, from cab drivers to waiters, from store cashiers to flight attendants, with dignity and respect. But you have to earn respect, if only by keeping respect by doing your job in customer service and by maintaining your dignity. If you have a problem customer deal with them as best you can until you have to bring in the big guns. You do not deploy the other big guns. You do not get to humiliate yourself and make wretched looking the other members of your industry (or your societal subsection and 12 step group).

The man is a loose cannon.

Discharge him.