So if you haven’t heard yet, Kevin Smith got kicked off a Southwest flight for “being too fat”. Which for starters, this isn’t anything new to any airline. Most just require passengers to buy two seats and Southwest is the only one that will reimburse that second seat purchase if the flight isn’t full. From the belly of the beast, Southwest is not instituting this rule to make more money off of customers. Rather the policy is around the safety and comfort of passengers. From the Southwest blog post Not so Silent Bob:
Mr. Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank – as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest. He decided to change his plans and board an earlier flight to Burbank, which technically means flying standby. As you may know, airlines are not able to clear standby passengers until all Customers are boarded. When the time came to board Mr. Smith, we had only a single seat available for him to occupy. Our pilots are responsible for the Safety and comfort of all Customers on the aircraft and therefore, made the determination that Mr. Smith needed more than one seat to complete his flight. Our Employees explained why the decision was made, accommodated Mr. Smith on a later flight, and issued him a $100 Southwest travel voucher for his inconvenience.
Huh that puts things in a much different perspective than what the Internet has been abuzz with. Even Kevin Smith’s own podcast paints a different picture. Am I missing something?
Yup! Listen to the podcast from Kevin Smith if you haven’t yet. It paints a different picture and comes off less corporate trying to cover some ass and more sincere. What happened I can’t quote like the blog post from Southwest, but the main points were: the situation was handled poorly or what appears to be poorly from some individuals that likely have had a tough day. I won’t judge them and I thought Kevin Smith did a good job of that too.
I have worked in customer service all my working life and I know how bad things can get (shit I worked for Disney World), but when things get bad you step away and let someone else deal with it. Better that than blowing up or taking things out on a tweeter with roughly a million followers.
Another key point, it appears that someone had a personal motivation or took an official policy too far. I’m more inclined to think the latter cause I work in corporate right now and I see it all the time. Some person that can’t think for their self takes the “law” too seriously instead of taking a deep breath and thinking for a moment.
The last key point, Southwest did the same thing to another customer (a girl), that they did to Kevin Smith just a couple hours earlier. Really? So this isn’t an isolated incident and makes you wonder how often it happens. But to hear Kevin Smith describe the look on the poor girls face to go through what she endured just breaks my heart. It’s hard enough being a female or male to go through that, let alone trying to get home and having to put up with it and then relive the story to the passenger next to you.
My best guess is this policy was rolled out with some typical corporate training and the robots are just sent back out to the real world to deal with situations requiring brain power. All the stewardess had to do, or the person trying to get Kevin Smith off the plane, was talk to the two ladies next to him and make sure they were comfortable. If so, then get on with life. As Kevin Smith points out, he was able to put down both armrests and fit in the seat snug, but fit in the seat.
But corporate training doesn’t teach you this. They can’t as there are far too many real life situations to go over. The best you can do is try to get across to your employees to use their head for situations that come up. In my experience such discussion of using the brain rarely take place. Instead you get some training and get thrown out.
Before this event I swore by Southwest to everyone I talked to. I didn’t have enough positive things to say about them as I have never even had the slightest hint of a negative experience. In all aspects of flying. Same for my wife. While I cannot speak for my wife on this matter I can speak for myself.
I can no longer choose Southwest for just because reasons. The action taken by the employees and the lack of action taken by the company leave me to think twice about flying with them. The behavior exhibited by the employees was uncalled for and should not be tolerated. I can’t imagine how I would feel having someone do that to me.