Flight Attendant Career Fail

There’s been a lot of coverage of Steven Slater the last few days over reports of his negative encounter on August 9, 2010 with a passenger aboard an airplane. Comments and opinions about the perils of being a flight attendant as well as Slater’s sensational “farewell” actions are everywhere it seems.

I think that most will agree that the actions he took in his goodbye were a career-ending move. I certainly don’t recommend what he did to essentially quit his job – bad customer service, unprofessional, burning bridges, dangerous, kinda out-of-control, and so forth.

There’s no way that his actions were spontaneous, right? He must have thought about doing some of those things beforehand, be it telling off the passenger off over the intercom, grabbing a beer, or activating the emergency chute and sliding down it. I wonder for how long he dreamed about this kind of a goodbye, knowing that these actions would no doubt lead to career failure.

Nonetheless, his actions have struck a nerve and resonated with a lot of folks. I wonder if he will inspire others who feel like quitting a job to actually do so just as dramatically?