Posted on 04/12/2009 7:12:31 PM PDT by SkyDancer
Because "It's Time For The Ticketing Agent's Break" Mike rushed his girlfriend to the airport to catch a flight to see her dying mother, only to watch her miss the flight because United Airline's ticketing agent refused to help because "it was time for her to go on her break." Passengers waiting in line were more than willing to let Mike's girlfriend skip to the front of the line, but her sad situation apparently wasn't enough to earn the agent's sympathies. When his girlfriend finally reached the gate in time to watch her flight depart, the gate agent defended his colleague's lack of sympathy, saying "management really makes us work some unreasonable schedules."
Dear Mr. Tilton:
When the employees of large companies discard compassion, respect, and common human decency and instead place their own interests in front of those they are chartered to serve, then they are no longer deserving of the public's trust.
On February 19th, I received a phone call from my girlfriend's father indicating that her mother was close to death, and that-if at all possible-I should try and get his daughter to Portland, Oregon as quickly as I could.
I immediately left my office and began making arrangements to leave San Francisco for Portland, including calling the United Premier Reservation line on my way home to book a flight. The gentleman on the line provided me with a reservation number, informed me that I could pick up my tickets at the counter, and wished me the best of luck as the timing would be tight. On our way to the airport, I commented to my girlfriend that our ability to catch the 7:50 flight "would depend on the kindness of strangers."
Little did I know that the only unkind strangers I would encounter would all be wearing United blue.
We arrived at the airport at 7:20, but with very short ticket and security lines I felt that we had a decent chance of making the gate before the doors were closed. I explained to those customers waiting in line that we had a family emergency, and each agreed to let us move to the front.
The first agent to help me indicated that he could not ticket any passengers, and referred me to a different agent at the end of the counter. I approached this new agent, provided her with my record locator number and explained my emergency. I also asked her if there was any way she could contact the gate agent to let them know we were on our way, and perhaps keep the door open a few minutes longer if we were delayed at security.
To my utter amazement, your agent handed me back my record locator number, looked me straight in the eye, and informed me that she couldn't ticket me because "it was time for her to go on her break." I wasn't sure I heard her correctly, so I repeated the nature of our emergency. Again, your agent informed me that it was time for her break, "she had no choice," and that if I had a problem with it, I could talk to her supervisor.
I was absolutely horrified. The only person at the United counter who had the ability to ticket passengers felt that it was more important to go grab a soda than to give me a decent chance at making a flight to be with a dying relative.
I argued with this woman for a good 10 minutes, growing increasingly agitated. Even those passengers who had let me move to the front of the line voiced their objections. She did nothing to assist me, choosing instead to continue to quote company policy. Why she didn't just leave to go on her break is beyond me. Before she finally left, she placed a call to her supervisor and said, in a very sarcastic tone, that there was a customer at the counter "whose mother is sick and dying and who wants to hold a flight and speak with a supervisor." She refused to provide me with her name or employee number.
By the time I was able to find somebody new to help me, it was clear that I would no longer be able to make the 7:50 PM flight. I asked the new ticketing agent if there was any way that he could contact the gate to let them know we were on our way, but he said it was impossible. He booked us on the 10:30 flight.
Upon receiving our tickets, we ran to the security line and quickly made our way to the gate to see if there was still hope of making the 7:50 flight. The plane was still there, but the door was closed and your gate agent was turning other passengers away (including those who had arrived late on a connecting flight). I explained our ordeal to the gate agent, who simply provided me with some "United-style" sympathy: not only could he not re-open the gate, but he told me that he could understand the behavior of the ticketing agent because "management really makes us work some unreasonable schedules."
A perfect keystone ending to the most imperfect, flawed, and horrifying customer experience I have ever had in my life.
I realize that we can't legislate good customer service, and I suspect that no regulations were violated in this noble attempt by your staff to have us "fly the friendly skies." However, given the animosity that your employees seem to have for their management as well as their passengers, I hardly have faith in their ability to serve the public interest in other matters, including those involving passenger safety.
My girlfriend's mother passed away at 2:50 AM, shortly after we arrived in Portland. We will, of course, never know what we might have been able to share with her in the two and a half hours we burned sitting at a gate at SFO.
I certainly hope your agent's break was worth that price.
I curse that uncaring, unfeeling United ticket agent in the Name of the Lord.
When I started regular flying for my work, I had the misfortune to choose United. Did it twice and evidently encountered the relatives of this particular United employee. I don’t fly with them any more, and actually cancelled a business trip when my regular airline couldn’t accommodate me and gave me United as an alternate.
In summary, they suck. Big time.
If this is real, it is absolutely heart breaking. I only doubt its authenticity because I can’t imagine people being this cold to other people.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Did Tilton ever reply? The reply should be very interesting.....
Sounds like DMV here in kalifornia! They even have the nerve to sit at their work station in plain sight and eat their snack.
one could hope that the management would track the flight/day and work schedule to the ticket agents in question...
I would take any story on Consurmerist with a grain of salt. They are owned by the same flaming libs who run Gawker, Wonkette, etc.
There are several websites that list incidents by United. Some are even worse than this.
?
Anyone who travels might be interested in this link:
Some helpful information and some things you can do to help.
Had he chosen to fly southwest out of Oakland, he very likely would have made all the gates without difficulty.
Southwest will bust their buns to make it work, if they possibly can.
United is a gutter airline - back in the day when I wore the uniform, it was A United stewrdess who gave me a box lunch instead of the regular meal because I was flying half-price/standby with a sweet smile and a smarmy “I’m sure you’ll understand” (I did, but not in the way she meant) - and a United ticket agent at the San Fran airport who handed me my ticket with a snide “Here’s your ticket, baby killer” - may they go bankrupt yesterday.......
Baby killer????
I guess I’m a lucky one. I too fly regularly for work and fly almost exclusively United. They have treated me well over the last decade of 40k a year flying.
You can add Alaska Airlines to the list also.
Arriving at 7:20 for a 7:50 flight means the flight was already boarding. Unless this happened a long time ago, there is no SFO flight at 7:50 - it’s at 7:41, meaning you had only 11 minutes to check in, go through security, run down the long concourse at SFO, and get to the airplane.
You weren’t getting on that airplane even if Mother Theresa was checking you in.
This particular agent may need some training, but don’t extend your judgment to all of United’s counter agents. For every story like yours, there are dozens of others for agents going out of their way to help a traveler, and not even getting the simplest thank you.
Now don’t expect much from Mr. Tilton - he does need remedial training.
Of course there are also many Good Samaratan stories in America around which abound, so I dont mean to say that there are not any good people left in the USA. (They are there. Many of them are FReepers!).
But there is an increasing amount of people in service industries facing the American consumer--usually in big companies--who just do not care anymore. And what that usually translated into or is grown out of, is lack of human respect and heavy doses of self-centeredness.
As was pointed out by a foreign friend who sees America from afar and externally analyzes it, she said (after 30 years of knowing America) there has been a big decline in basic respect between Americans over the years, and it is reflected in service attitude (lack of service), and stories such as "going on a break" rather than help a fellow human out in a dire situation, appear to her (and maybe to me) to be increasing, so the United story does not surprise me.
I have seen increasing acts of coldness, insulting and condescending behavior, rudeness and lack of care on the part of United Airlines in the last 10-15 years or so; seen it on other airlines as well. That is why many of us have sworn off domestic US carriers when and if we can, and prefer overseas carriers which often tend to treat people like human beings who pay their salaries, not like CATTLE to be loaded up as quickly as possible, that are barely tolerated, or bumped/offloaded at will and then told at 3:00 a.m. in a strange city, "sorry mack, you're on your own". If US firms want us to BUY AMERICAN again, many of them are going to have to start acting like it and win our hearts back. Until then, sorry, no thanks (to United Airlines and a host of domestic US firms) whenever and wherever possible. They can only be forgiven so many times; then you have to put your foot down and vote with your pocketbook, and best yet, let them know of that decision by way of a letter.
You're one in a hundred. I used to fly United every other week for a year back seven years ago. The WORST treatment I've ever seen or experienced on any airline.
For the little comfort it may be worth, two friends are captains at United, one retired, his wife still flies the San Fransisco to Beijing route.
Each of them goes out of their way to be as helpful to passengers as possible. He even volunteers as an airport ambassador (United term for an assistant).
United personnel are usually like my friends, not the problem child you encountered.
In a service industry, no airline can afford employees with ‘attitude’.
The fact that the counter person may have resented your also being female but a pilot, better educated, prettier, etc. is her problem, and should have never, ever resulted in the debacle you described.
Making the matter worse is that your emergency could have been solved with a few moments on the phone. AND, having so done would have shown up on her employment record as a strong indicator of judgment and ability to cope with unusual passenger needs.
Instead, she screwed the pooch - and how!
Please let the FR community know what the CEO says in his reply to you.
IMHO, it sounds like her proper employment role will be found at TSA, not an airline. That assumes that TSA would have her after this gets out.
It appears from the story that he had very little time to get to the airport. I know there are people there who accommodate situations like this ... to me the story speaks for itself ... there are several websites that list horror stories about UAL ... true there may be other airlines with similar instances but invariably UAL is always at the top of the list ....
Southwest is the BEST out there ....
In August, 1989, (at age 24) I got the call, that my Dad was in the ER and would not live long. He was in Phoenix, I was in St. Louis. That night, I went from St. Louis, to Little Rock to New Mexico, all because of the kindness of the airline workers I came across. I had money, but no tickets or reservations.
I ended up in an airport in NM, and didn't make it in time to say goodbye. But, I will always be grateful to the kind people I encountered that night, who tried.
To have someone deny even the chance to get there in time is, without a doubt, one of the meanest and coldest things I have ever heard about.
MOgirl
RE: the baby killer snide remark. I would have said “Seems that I missed you some place” .....
No question about it. IMHO Continental is a distant second. The rest...forget about it.
Even if management wanted to discipline this employee, the union would prevent it, and would probably have caused trouble for the employee if she had continued actually working when union rules said she was supposed to be on break. Unions suck the humanity out of both union workers and their management teams.
No electronic checkin? If he had a locator code why’d he even need to talk to a gate agent?
United was very accommodating.
“it was time for her to go on her break.”
Just a guess here, but I’m thinking this might be better taken up with the union, rather than the airline.
I flew Untied Airlines to Australia one summer .... baaad experience ... lousy food and surly CA's ...there were other flights I >had< to use UAL .... never again ...
AA isn’t bad, sorta ....
I won’t fly them after I had a bad experience while traveling with two of my kids when they were small. If not for an old friend who saw me in the Denver airport trying to make a gate with two kids and loaded down, we might have missed our plane. United was supposed to have met us at the gate but didn’t have the time. That was after another AF officer on the flight from Ontario to Denver got a stubborn guy to move so I could sit with my two kids. Stewardess did NOTHING when the guy refused to change seats as the airline had given him and I the same seat and no one the seat behind.
To this day I have never flown United again and will not. I believe this story completely after all that I have heard over the years.
Here is a hint: NEVER ask for bereavement fares as they are often the MOST EXPENSIVE way to fly.
The only difficulty I’ve ever had was due to operational changes and they’ve changed the seat I booked. For personal reasons I only fly “a” seats and they used to occasionally rebooked me to “f” seats when they’ve changed plane type from the original booking. Last time they did that a couple years ago I sent them an e-mail telling them to cut it out and if they ever rebook me to a “f” seat I’ll start flying Southwest. The next two flights they upgraded me to first class and have never rebooked me to a “f” seat since.
Otherwise they get my luggage and myself from point a to point b and have been reasonable and accommodating including first class upgrades when I’ve faced weather disruptions.
There are horror stories about nearly every service organization in the world. Have a little balance in your judgments. Southwest has its problems too, of which there would be even more except that people’s expectations are lower for a non-frills carrier.
I often wonder how those who complain of the treatment they get at an airline, department store, etc., treat their own customers. Some of those “Premier” and other snob category customers can be the biggest jerks themselves.
Bottom line - there are nice people and there are nasty people. Even though there are a lot more of the former, there are too many of the latter.
LOL - it’s what I and my friends call UAL ... I remember being at LAX and saw a UAL line truck with Untied Airlines on it ... thanks for the link.
Baby killer????
I assume that since he was wearing a uniform they were refering to those being in the military as “baby killers”. Some stupid lib idiot who doesn’t value our men in uniform probably said that. The lunch incident was rather mean, also.
Just wait until the GOVERNMENT is in charge of your health care then these people will seem like warm, concerned, caring individuals who went out of their way to help.
America is full of these United Airline attendant types, wanting higher pay for less work, etc., but fortunately we don’t see them everyday.
First of all I just posted the article as an FYI, then see post #39 and go to that link ....
hmmmm ... something feels a bit off here. They couldn’t check in on the machine ... and despite the fact that they had only minutes to make it to the gate, they misremembered the time of the plane?
This could be real. Or it could be a Mrs. Fields cookies type attempt to see how often their email gets forwarded.
With nothing more than the name “Mike” to back up the story I am suspending judgement on United until I hear some confirmation, or at least a full name of the victim.
Well I found the story on The Consumerist - it’s a website devoted to consumer complaints - I ran across it during some aviation searches ... thought it’d be ok here for an FYI ... but as you say, there’s good and bad all round ...
That is not a good excuse at all. On the other hand *if* the agent said that the company has strict rules regarding employees taking their breaks on time (perhaps in response to past trouble with the union) then I'd have a little sympathy for the worker and blame the worker's lack of empowerment.
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