I don’t think the mods are Nazis. Oh, wait, I get it. Ad hominem to straw man. Very good. Sarcasm and whoosing.
Oh, wait, I thought I was out of here.
Cartman voice: Screw you guys again, I’m outta here!
So, uh, just say “I wanted a fifth of a pound” when he put it on the scale for pricing. Instead of narcing on him to the more experienced employee. (Who says new higher-ups don’t ask those under him with experience for advice?) Sparticus… chill out a bit, if you want to be taken seriously here. I hope you do a bit, this place is fun on the whole.
As for the OP… Seems a bit threatening, doncha think? (the sticker, not Anthracite) I work at a deli and I have “They put anthrax in the potato salad” written on my t-shirt on store ground, while wearing my Ralph’s Hat and holding my Ralph’s nametag- that’s not grounds for complaint?
Flight attendants are somewhat “in the know” as far as basic operations of their company. If this somewhat-authority on airline travel says “Bush Knew,” what’s to keep me from thinking he “knows” that something else is gonna happen.
Someone who supposedly knows what they’re talking about implies that the customer is not safe in some way? Seems, as “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” would say, inappropriate.
I know I shouldn’t be doing this, but…
Your response to this “serious” question was to provide a laughably trifling example that doesn’t even apply to your own point about ratting out employees. In your deli example, the person providing the shitty service was the owner, not someone you could rat out even if you wanted to. Duh. And you accuse the rest of us of having problems with analogies?
Is it just me, or does anyone else think this would have made a great storyline for a Seinfeld episode?
[Stewardess]
Buh-bye now.
[/Stewardess]
I am Sparticus, the first rule of this message board is “Don’t be a jerk.” You have consistently been a jerk in this thread. I don’t ever want to see such behavior from you on this message board again.
Lynn
For the Straight Dope
I still see no intent on anth’s part where she wanted this person fired. Your assumptions are a bit OTT and in your first post you came on just as OTT. Don’t be surprised when people get irritated with you.
FTR, I am not part of any clique, I know practically no one on this board save for 2 or 3 people and even they do not regularly talk to me (they haven’t even posted in this thread). Could it be that there are more than a few people that think your logic and far-fetched assumptions are a bit screwy? And that it is not some “conspiracy” on the part of a “clique” to tear down someone who has a different opinion? I have seen people with a different opinion debate much more civilly than you have and they have, for the most part, been treated with respect. Had you shown this civility in your first post I doubt there would have been too much of an uproar. I could be wrong. :eek:
After reading through this again, I get the feeling that her OP hit a little too closeto home for you, and if I can borrow some of your skill of making wild assumptions I’d venture to guess that you lost a job due to you providing shitty-ass service, and someone called you on it.
I don’t know you, so I don’t care one way or the other.
I don’t know anth. At all. She does not know me. I am, singularly, confused at your approach to this. Second, yes, some of these people work for a living, and some of them get on planes to do business and I think the last thing they want to see is a reminder of how vulnerable they can be in the air, how quickly life can be taken from them. Of course I don’t think anything should be swept under the rug, but I think that reminder could be done with class (i.e., a small flag pin on the lapel), or it can be done tastelessly, as on that bumpersticker. You even agreed it’s bad taste and bad judgment on the part of the FA.
You bitch at anth about not confronting the FA whose sticker offended her and then you turn around and complain to the long time employee and not the new owner who is the one causing your problem???
WTF? Hypocritical, much?
In what way is this different from anth calling on the phone? It’s more than likely whoever you are writing the letter to complain, it’s going to be some higher-up.
I smell sour grapes. Who should I call to complain?
I guess I can’t call you to complain, you’re not coming back.
:smack:
Who wants to bet s/he does?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by LolaBaby *
<…snip>
After reading through this again, I get the feeling that her OP hit a little too closeto home for you, and if I can borrow some of your skill of making wild assumptions I’d venture to guess that you lost a job due to you providing shitty-ass service, and someone called you on it.
<…snip>
Darnit, *LolaBaby, I wanted to say that first! Oh well.
…however, I can’t ponint to myself as a good example of coding skills. :rolleyes:
sigh
You might consider the First Amendment a “tangent”, but if you’re going to adopt the “I’m smart and everybody else is stupid” tactic, the intelligence of your argument is not a tangent. Normally, I’d let the backpedaling slide, but you’ve made intelligence an issue.
Who was using “First Amendment” as shorthand? Certainly not the first two posters. You now appear to be trying to say you were, but it’s pretty clear from the context of the thread and your own post that you meant First Amendment to mean First Amendment. You used your state’s labor code and NLRA as examples of why the First Amendment isn’t “null and void” on the job.
But even if you were saying that, your argument still doesn’t hold:
It’s not only tenable, it’s historically accurate. The NLRA arose during the New Deal when labor unions gained power. They pushed for a right to organize to increase their power. They were not interested in giving employees the right to rally on company time for support of East Timor, legalized pot or any other “political views”. The provisions of the NLRA apply to labor issues and labor issues alone. Therefore, the NLRA is a content-based grant of statutory rights. The First Amendment is a content-neutral constitutional protection. Your First Amendment argument is completely invalid.
True, you don’t know me at all, but you seem like a person I’d really like to know.
I do greatly appreciate your spirited defence of me, and that of every other person here who did so, and I assure you all that your belief in my non-assholishness was not misplaced.
I agree with you. Something done small and tastefully would have been a different matter, perhaps.
This is true - letters are very often taken much more seriously, and are the sort of things that often end up stuck into permanent records.
The irony is incredible here, I agree. Somehow, calling on the phone is considered “vile, evil, despicable, etc., etc. insert libelous slur or threat which will be acted on by Anthracite’s attorney IRL…”, yet writing a letter saying the same thing is “OK”. 
As 99% of the Members in this thread figured out, I thought I was doing everything right - I didn’t make a scene, I didn’t risk getting into trouble at the airport, I called up the airline a day later, after I had had time to cool down, and tried to calmly explain why things like that particular sticker might not be good for their business case.
It seems, except for the bizarre and threatening rants, that what most other people objected to was the use of the “Klan” analogy. I’m willing to admit it was the wrong thing to do, but you must believe what I wrote earlier - I tried to find an agregious example of why Free and Unrestricted Speech by employees is not necessarily something that a company can deal with. Why did I pick “Klan” and not “Nazi” or “Fred Phelps Follower” or “NAMBLA Member”? Hell, I don’t know - maybe because I instinctively thought of the most disgusting thing to me in my mind - a racist - and that was the most agregious example?
The irony is being called a racist openly here for using a racist group as that most agregious example of a viewpoint that would be best left off of an employees luggage. I suppose had I picked one of the other above choices, I would have shared the honor with Coldfire of having been called a “Nazi”. Or maybe I would have been called a “homophobe”, since that’s so obviously what I am…
Boy, Sparticus [sic], you are a real piece of work. You spend hundreds of words jumping to conclusions about people on no basis whatsoever except for your own prejudices, and you call us cowards. Hoo, boy.
First, to address some points from your moronic burblings:
Some of the people on this message board, perhaps in this very thread had friends and co-workers on those planes and in those buildings. Some of us are currently sitting in offices that are within five miles of the Pentagon. So what is your statement supposed to prove, here?
Actually, you don’t know how many days a week she works. You don’t know whether, or if, any of the people in this thread, or Anthracite in particular, even drinks. And you don’t know how many air miles any of us logs each year. Your psychic wonders are proving less wonderful with each idiotic post. Some of us know that Anthracite logs thousands of miles in air travel, including several transoceanic flights, every year. So what was your point supposed to be here again?
Boy, are you fucking dumb. I mean really, really dumb. Just think for a minute, will you? This person put this bumper sticker not on her bumper, but on her luggage. She works as a flight attendant. She is going to be carrying that luggage around on a daily basis – it’s part of her job. So, clearly, she intended for someone to see it. And given the nature of her job, and the nature of the object that she put it on, let’s see if we can figure out who she intended to see it, mmmmkay?
Tibetans? Probably not. Steelworkers? Unlikely. Football players? Uh-uh. How about airline passengers? Maybe? Do you think maybe that’s who she wants to see her little message? Possibly? I know it’s a reeeeeal stretch for someone possessed of your finely honed mental instincts, but try it on and see how it fits.
And what’s the message she intended to send? Well, it lies somewhere in between “I am a radical political badass who is not afraid to express unpopular opinions! Fight the power!” and “I am a freakin’ conspiracy theorizing loon who you are supposed to entrust with your care, comfort and safety at 35,000 feet.” And she cannot possibly, given the intended audience and intended message, have not imagined that nobody was going to complain about it.
As for the rest of your supposition and blather about Anth being offended just because of her political beliefs, that she’s some super-extreme right winger who doesn’t want an expressed liberal to have a job, and that she might be a closet racist, well, sorry pal. It don’t wash. Again, we know her. Some of us have personal relationships with her. (Not me, but some of us.) And we know that your suppositions are bullshit. So you’re still going to have to do better.
And, beating a dead horse, this point about the Klan: It seems clear to me that Anth was attempting, perhaps confrontatively and clumsily, to ask the customer service person at the airline exactly what the limits of “political expression” that they would accept from their employees would be. If you pick a particularly egregious example, and the customer service person hangs up on you, I think you’ve pretty much gleaned that they’'re full of shit. There obviously are limits, but they don’t want to deal with them.
What makes “I support the KKK” inherently more offensive than, “The President of the United States knew that 3,000 Americans were to be killed by terrorists and did nothing to prevent it?” I think the latter is actually far more offensive. In fact, I find it doubly offensive coming from an airline employee, since it was the lax security in airports and among airlines (combined with massive intelligence failure and incompetence) that allowed these guys on the planes in the first place.
Thank you, Phil. And also thank you for not picking on me spelling it “agregious”. :o :o :o
If you don’t want people to call in and “mess with your job” then don’t post your controversial political views on your AA luggage while wearing your AA flight attendant uniform in plain view of AA’s customers.
You must be one important dude.
Or else it was a really, really slow news day.
One imagines the other headlines:
“I am Spart(i)cus’s Dry Cleaning A Success!”
“Car Parker Aligns I am Spart(i)cus’s Toyota Neatly In Stall!”
I’ll call the wire services. 
True, but at least he has the courage to stand up for his convictions and demand his sandwich have a full helping of meat on it!
Oh.
Wait.
He doesn’t have that courage. All he can do is go mewling to an underling who doesn’t have the power to change what the owner’s doing rather than go to the person committing the "crime’ against him.
But at least, in his own cravenly way, he’s standing up…er…cringing up for the rights of sandwich lovers everwhere!!!
BTW: I work as a manager in a customer service job. I assure you that I’ll take a letter from a customer far more seriously than I’ll take a phone-call. If someone takes the time and energy to write and mail a letter, I certainly give it more creedence than a phone call.
Fenris
Just so I don’t get accused of a drive-by:
I am not a stew, FTR, I just posted as one on TV. I do, however, still think that it’s a slippery slope when we try to inhibit political/free speech in the workplace. “You can’t say, ‘Bush Knew’ while you’re on the clock” isn’t far from “You can’t say ‘Union,’” IMHO. While I understand that such a sentiment can be disturbing, that flight attendant still has the same right to a tinfoil hat as anyone else, and has the right to express such obvious idiocy on her personal property as anyone else. AA would–and should–have every right to discipline her if it were on her uniform, but as it was on her personal property (or at least with Delta, FAs have to buy their own luggage; it’s not company-provided), then it’s her personal property, and her employer has no right to tell her that she can’t put swastikas, pentacles, or pictures of Square Sponge Bob Pants, or whatever the hell his name is.
If AA wants to control the speech of their employees as displayed on luggage, they should issue it as company-owned.
You are correct on a very narrow basis. American Airlines can not tell her what to put on her personal property. They can, however, tell her not to bring personal property with political messages to the job where they are visible to clients. That’s a distinction that a lot of people seem to be missing.
The fact that it’s her personal property does not magically transform this into a First Amendment issue. Let’s assume that the flight attendant had to buy her own clothing. Are you saying that American Airlines couldn’t prohibit her from wearing a “Bush Knew” button on a flight?
As I’ve said before, I don’t know much about the airline industry so I don’t know if she was considered “on the job” or not (though at least one poster with experience seemed to indicate they would be considered on the job at the time.) Whether or not they were on the job is relevant to what American can do, but the issue of personal property seems pretty irrelevant. I own all the clothing I wear to work. My employers have every right to tell me not to wear something that offends our clients or put an offensive sticker on my briefcase. That’s not a First Amendment issue even though I own my clothing and my briefcase.
OK, I guess it’s all been said by now, but I had to point this out:
Yes. And those who pay attention while working for a living figure out that it doesn’t pay to irritate/alienate/frighten one’s customers.
A job is where you go to make money. It is not there as a public forum for opinions; it is not there to give you a sense of satisfaction in life or to foster your self-esteem or to provide employees a chance to express themselves. It is there because there is some task that needs doing, but that people won’t do for free, and so the employer pays someone to do it. That’s all. The flight attendant, who clearly knew that her luggage would be seen by many airline passengers, was doing something potentially harmful to her employer’s business, and the employer needed to be alerted to that behavior. Good show, Anthracite.
And by the way, the BBB may not be able to help, but if you’re serious, try the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Anth, a thought just occurred to me. Perhaps the customer service rep was black and she hung up on you because she felt you were trying to bait her by using the Klan example…As a white female I can see the point you were trying to make but I can see how a black person might be ultra sensitive to the Klan comment…
In any event, I would definitely call AA back and ask to speak to someone in higher authority. You have every right to complain if an employee made you feel uneasy.
1.) If an off-duty cop, in uniform were to march in support of a controversial group like, say, NAMBLA, anyone here care to bet how long the cop would have his job? My guess is not long, since his bosses wouldn’t want it to look like the police, as an organization were supporting NAMBLA, or whoever.
2.) American has lots of very expensive lawyers who are paid to worry about if a policy is Constitutional or not. In a situation like this, you can no doubt bet their advice would be sought and followed to the letter.
3.) On 9/11 American ordered it’s planes out of the sky before the FAA gave the order to ground all planes. (Source a USA Today article a few weeks back.) You can bet the head honchos would take something like this very seriously.
4.) On of the jobs of a stewardess is to make passengers feel safe and secure. Can’t very well do that if you project an image of a loon.
5.) No doubt the stews union would be pissed at this as well, I suggest a letter to them, also.
6.) Do you know what pilot slang for stews supposedly is? “Air mattresses”. 
Go get 'em Anth!