In defense of the agent, it seems to me that he probably tried to remove the stroller, she resisted, and he got ****ed and whacked her with it.
I think this thing has morphed into a great big game of "telephone," internet style (as do so many other things these days). Initially, when this first broke, I had heard that the woman was
hit by the stroller, as the FA tried to remove it. Now, this has now turned into the FA hit her with the stroller. I would think that if this FA (gate agent) physically swung the stroller and hit the passenger with it, you'd see a lot more animosity on the flight that just the one over eager passenger (who probably didn't see what happened, either).
It's funny how this board is so quick to condemn and media reports on aviation (rightfully so), since they so very often gets things totally wrong and just report in order to sensationalize. But yet, based on that same media's reporting of this incident and a snippet of video that started rolling well after the initial incident occurs we are ready to be the judge and jury. Case closed.
That man didn't like what he saw was happening, AA agreed it was BS as can be seen from their actions, done and done
Come'on, James. You know as well as I do that after the United incident, every airline is going to be in a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. They do not want this to spiral a la Dr. Dao, so they knee-jerked it as quickly as they could. Suspend the FA, give the passenger a 1st class upgrade. Period. The customer is always right! Bull. Anyone who has worked in a customer service industry knows that old trope is rarely correct.
Back before the internet age and "instant gratification media" people were expected to gather information and make a decision based on facts and reason. In fact, that's the reason that Oscar Munoz wrote such a milquetoast initial response to the Dr. Dao incident. He committed the mortal sin of the information age; he was waiting to get all the facts. That earned him public scorn in this day and age of instant gratification.
Two CEOs (coincidentally airline CEOs) which are highly regarded for their airlines customer service fully believed that the customer wasn't always right, and that supporting your employees when dealing with an unreasonable customer can be the right thing to do.
Gordon Bethune said:
When we run into customers that we can’t reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees ...
We run more than 3 million people through our books every month. One or two of those people are going to be unreasonable, demanding jerks. When it’s a choice between supporting your employees, who work with you every day and make your product what it is, or some irate jerk who demands a free ticket to Paris because you ran out of peanuts, whose side are you going to be on?
You can’t treat your employees like serfs. You have to value them ... If they think that you won’t support them when a customer is out of line, even the smallest problem can cause resentment.
Herb Kelleher said:
But aren’t customers always right? “No, they are not,” Kelleher snaps. “And I think that’s one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people.’”
Now, I'm not saying that there aren't bad employees that need to be reined in, disciplined or fired, but don't do it before you have all the facts. Because if the facts come out and your employee was in the right (or at least didn't do wrong) and you reacted inconsistently or incorrectly you are going to lose the loyalty of your employees.
