I’m disturbed that “we” have created a hero in Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who pretty much followed the theme of Johnny Paycheck’s working man’s (and woman’s) anthem, “Take This job and Shove it.”
But he ‘s no hero, and we need to stop treating him like one. He acted like a petulant child. It doesn’t matter if he was antagonized. He’s a grown-up and is (or was) a professional, and that’s just not how we act. We all have experienced an unruly and rude customer, client or coworker. However, as professionals, we deal with them maturely and appropriately.
My high school pal Gino said it best on his Facebook page this morning. I hope he doesn’t mind my quoting him:
“If we want to be a nation of children who act out for the camera — frustrated bank tellers who might decide to throw bags of money in the street, angry waiters who decide to pour water on patrons, bus drivers who abandon their routes and climb to roofs of their buses to enjoy some cold beer and give the finger to anxious parents — then we’d better understand what we are abandoning. It’s not the America I know where people have always doubled down in their willingness to work harder, be kinder and find a way to stay aboard, not bail out.”
Gino always was the smart one.
