The case of Steven Taylor has got all sorts of media channels very excited. You'll recall that 38 year old Mr Taylor is/was a senior flight attendant with the award winning and social media savvy JetBlue Airlines in the States and on Monday last week he very spectacularly quit his job after conflict with a passenger who allegedly stood up and tried to retrieve their luggage from the overhead locker before the plane had finished coming to a standstill at JFK, despite an announcement asking passengers not to.
The story goes that the passenger had oversized bags anyway and when Mr. Taylor went to ask her to sit down, the bag fell out and hit her on the head inflicting a nasty gash.
With this ST an employee of more than 20 years "flipped" stormed back up the aisle, grabbed the P.A. and told the passengers what he thought of them, opened the door of the aircraft and jumped down the emergency slide swigging a can of beer, walked across to his car and drove home. Well what else would any self-respecting male flight attendant do?
ST has now become something of a celeb, he has hired Howard Bragg, one of the most powerful and influential PR guys in Hollywood, he has been offered a reality show, by Showtime and is currently on bail pending the court case due at the end of next month.
This story is interesting on three levels other than the obvious. ST, despite showing a total lack of professionalism, service and care for his passengers (it is the FAA who are pressing charges for endangering a passenger jet etc) is now an internet hero, striking a blow for all those people who hate their jobs and their “stupid ignorant customers”
He has a Paypal fund already set up by "admirers" which has accumulated £45k in a week to pay his expected legal fees and court costs. He enjoys the support of a ST Facebook fan site which has 95,000 fans and another site - the rather dramatically named "Save Steven Taylor" site which has 15,000 supporters.
Interesting to say the least that the outcome of his reckless and stupid behaviour is financial reward and cult hero status. It's just a shame that the real hospitality heroes and service heroes who work tirelessly day in and day out sometimes working in really tough conditions, (not enjoying discounted flights for friends and family and duty free shopping, meal allowances and uniform etc) don't get a look in or a nod, but just get on with it because they want to, because they believe it's the right thing to do and because they care.
It reminded of me of the occasion when I was at an awards show in the Northwest and a lady was being presented with a certificate for 35 years of working as a cleaner in a local pub. She had never had a day off through sickness and illness in her whole time of employment there. She would also come in and do extra shifts when needed and helped in the garden planted shrubs and flowers and tended to the beds all in her own time at her own cost. That my friend’s is a hospitality hero. Not a self-confessed "bag Nazi" who threw a little tizzy fit by throwing himself out the escape chute.
Good luck to ST. I wish him every success, my beef is not with him, it is more the celebration of the mediocre, when we should be striving to celebrate and reward excellence - surely?
The second aspect to this little melodrama is the way the organisations involved have responded to it. JetBlue a very media savvy company who work really hard with their social media (they have seven full time Tweeters) have said absolutely nothing about the incident and maybe for good reason with a court case due and possible litigation claims from all the passengers who were on board that day.
However “Never waste a crisis”, is the old saying and I'm sure JetBlue won't and will come out of this very strongly – but right now things are a little awkward for them. Contrast that however, with the makers of the slide, TMZ who are happily issuing press releases highlighting the successful deployment of one of their slides and have been delighted to note that " their product worked perfectly and Mr. Taylor was a model test subject for it, other than he didn't take his shoes off before going down". Gulliver reports that Spirit Airlines – a low cost carrier are telling their customers, “don’t be blue, slide down to get our low price airfares.”
There is a third point to this which Slate (business section of the New York Times) highlighted this week, that employee dissatisfaction appears to be at a very high level as the workforce gets squeezed by the Head Office bean counters and with high unemployment and low morale and the continued focus on recapatilising balance sheets, the pressure to drive more production with less staff has never been more intense.
Slate reports; “The economy has been growing for a year, and corporate profits have surged—Standard & Poor's estimates that profits of the constituents of the S&P 500 rose nearly 52% in the 2nd quarter of 2010 from 2009. Much of that impressive profit growth has been driven by the remarkable gains in efficiency and productivity that corporate America has notched since the recession took hold. Last year productivity soared 3.5 %, up from 1 % in 2008 and 1.6 % in 2007”
There clearly has been slack in the system and a readjustment was required, however, we have to respect and look after our people and our teams and respect the work they do for us and more importantly for our customers.
Leadership is not about cutting costs, looking for efficiencies of course and better value for money always – but just cutting costs?, frankly it’s not the best solution.
ST story is an interesting little cameo for us in these difficult and challenging times. Perhaps now is the time to start considering a more balanced view as a report from the Bureau of Labour Statistics published last week in the States suggests that “Workers put in more hours, but output didn't keep up. They simply can't run any faster”
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