Another Reason Why I Hate American Airlines

In my seven years of traveling professionally, I have come to loath United Airlines for various reasons. It seemed like an overwhelming majority of the flight attendants on United Airlines were downright mean spirited and had piss poor attitude. Not only did they publicly display how much they hate their job, and how they don't care for what they do, they also treat passengers like people who got in their way of completing their crossword puzzles and catching up on celebrity gossip. On top of that, they roll their eyes if you ask for another cup of water, as if four ounces was considered way too much for any passenger on a four hour flight.

I avoided United Airlines as much as I could in those seven years. If I could help it, I would always fly Southwest Airlines. Besides a few rotten apples in their flight attendant squadron (which I encountered perhaps once every 15 flights), the overall experience has been phenomenally awesome. And if business dictated a trip to a location where Southwest Airlines did not fly to, I would try to fly either Northwest Airlines or Continental Airlines. Third on the preference list was American Airlines.

Well, after the wonderful encounter on February 20 with an American Airlines flight attendant, I began to wonder if her personality was morphed due to the morale at work. But today, I think my suspicion is correct. Her racist and demeaning attitude was not only a reflection of herself, but a reflection of the workplace environment too. Just ask Carine Desir. All she wanted was oxygen in time of medical need, yet the American Airlines flight attendant refused her request twice. The flight attendant only decided to provide oxygen after other passengers became agitated at him/her. And to put the cherry on the top, the flight attendant gave Carine two empty canisters of oxygen!!!

Right...... I will not fly American Airlines ever, if I can help it, because A) the odds of having rude flight attendants on board is probably pretty high, and B) they don't have functional safety equipment on board!!! Nice... Real nice... I hope the FAA and NTSB get on AMR like white on rice.

Worse Than Grade School Children?!?

I'm working from Chicago today, instead of Seattle, mostly because I was on vacation in San Francisco till Tuesday. So I came to the downtown IBM office.

About 15 minutes ago, I got really annoyed when some people accidentally opened an exit door indicating that the alarm will sound when opened. There were lots of giggling, and I overheard someone say, "I guess it really does work!" I was furious, while glancing at their direction, thinking about how inconsiderate they were. Did they think the "Alarm will sound when opened" sign was there for mere decoration?!?

Of course, a few minutes after that, flashes lit up all over the floor like dancing lightning captured in a room. An announcement came over the public broadcast announcers stating: "Attention! This is an evacuation drill for the seventh floor. Please exit to the sixth floor through the nearest stairwell."

Damn it!!!

Luck would have it that today happened to be a surprise evacuation drill day. Considering that I only come to the office maybe once a month, if at all. I have always thought that drills were typically announced ahead of time, since I have often received emails in the past warning me when what kind of drills will occur.

Apparently, not this time. I couldn't even exit through the stairwell right behind me where the alarm had previously been tripped. I had to go all the way to the other side of the building. I was just thinking how lucky I was that the client conference call I was on had just ended before all this crap began.

What really shocked me the most was how poorly we performed, considering that it wasn't even a full house on my floor. At the end of the drill, a security guy in charge of the drill appeared.

"May I have your attention! Thanks for participating in the emergency drill today. We threw in a curveball and made one of the stairwells inaccessible due to a mock fire. Your evacuation took three minutes and 41 seconds. A good evacuation should have been less than two minutes and 30 seconds. We will be having a safety discussion with your representatives to see how we can improve this. Thank you for your time."

What?

WHAT?

WHAT?!?

For no more than 30 people to evacuate a not even half full floor, it took us that long? I was on the sixth floor rather quickly, and there were people coming down looong after me!

Demographically and statistically speaking, IBMers are supposed to be a group of highly-educated people, almost a cut above the general population. And we did worse than a group of middle school children during a massive school fire drill?!? To make this drill all the more embarrassing, the security guys screwed up and even gave us a few minutes of head start by accidentally tripping the alarm before the drill began!

How EMBARRASSING is that?!?