Unnecessary Rudeness

I am in mourning.

As previously mentioned, my bemoaning the death of customer service continues. Not only are service personnel overall ruder, less interested, more distracted and just plain dumber than ever, it extends even into an industry where customer service is required, indeed intended to cater to ensuring passenger comfort and that needs are tended to for the relatively short required attendance.

I'm talking about the airline industry.

Now, I realize an airline attendants (since there are stewardesses AND stewards now) don't make tips, however, we the "sheeple" are sardined in our cramped seats for a predetermined number of hours on a plane with no leg room and even less elbow room (and I'm both petite AND short!) and we get ONE measly cup of beverage with some ice, not even any snacks on most airlines anymore, and we don't even have the convenience of even checking the first bag. And we pay a LOT for the privilege to travel this way.

And now... well, apparently you can't tug on Superman's cape. You know... don't spit into the wind and all that.

Captain Cranky Pants of the Beverage Brigade DOES NOT LIKE TO HAVE HIS UNIFORM TUGGED, THANKYOUVERYMUCH!

Now, I wasn't the offending party, I was the needy recipient of just measly glass of water, which unfortunately I was desperately needing just after the cart passed our row as I'd been sleeping and woke with a pounding headache, a dry throat and croaked out feebly for water. My obliging father-in-law tried to get the attendant's attention, and resorted to tugging lightly on his shirtsleeve to ask for my water after not getting a response.

Captain Cranky Pants got my water irritably, (which I unfortunately I dumped part of onto me and down my shirt front rather than down my parched gullet,) and tells my father-in-law "Sir, I don't know where you're from, but tugging on people's clothing is rude anytime after the age of two." I was so shocked and literally speechless from my dry mouth and disbelief that I couldn't think of a word to say.

But I was angry. Perhaps my father-in-law was out of line making gentle, and what he perceived to be friendly, contact with a service person, but that attendant is in that job to provide just that... SERVICE to the passengers. By demeaning and embarrassing my father-in-law for such a minor and harmless act, another nail was firmly hammered in the coffin of customer care.

Now, trying to not react solely out of my anger and surprise, I imagined that he just got the news that his father is dying of terminal cancer, or that his girlfriend just broke up with him, or perhaps his wife is having an affair and just confessed before takeoff, but the reality is that if you don't like serving customers, DON'T BE IN CUSTOMER SERVICE! Everyone is entitled to a bad day. Everyone has their breaking point. I've been there. I have had them. But a friendly tug on a sleeve to get a glass of water should not be that breaking point.

The fact is that we are relatively undemanding as airline passengers. We buckle into our seats dutifully, we rarely speak, most people sleep or read, and we get served with one small cup. I am not saying their job is super easy, I'm just saying that as passengers, airline attendants typically have it pretty low-key. I've had a phone hurled at my head, I've been threatened and stalked, I've had bomb threats to my workplace, and I've had to call the cops, repeatedly. When things go wrong on an airplane, they go terribly, dreadfully wrong. But usually, the most annoying part is the incessantly crying baby. And that annoys everyone, not just the service personnel. Or occasionally having to deal with a barf bag or two. (Which I laud them for.)

With that said, a passenger gently tugging a sleeve is no call for a lecture on rudeness from someone who seems to have taken a night-study course in that very subject. I may have said something after deplaning about his personal irritability stemming from an erectile dysfunction problem, but the point of the matter is that rudeness has become so commonplace in the majority of customer service industries that it's the exception to get an actual considerate service person who genuinely tends to your needs.

Thankfully my father-in-law wrote the airline with all the specifics of the incident, and did not even demand any sort of reparations for his affront, though I doubt highly that they will travel on said airline again. And bad news spreads faster than good - so everyone reading this blog and all our family and friends know of the incident (though in my own self-interest I decline to state the name of said airline.)

With the lack of compassion and caring for our fellow humans on a global scale, the affliction of unnecessary rudeness is a plague, and one that by my own personal vendetta of random acts of kindness I hope to quell. But not today, Captain Cranky Pants of the Beverage Brigade. Your unnecessary rudeness was over the line.