Southwest Airlines' Christmas Meltdown Shows How Corporations Deliberately Pit Consumers Against Low
Southwest Airlines' Christmas Meltdown Shows How Corporations Deliberately Pit Consumers Against Low-Wage Workers
Our system is set up to create mutual antagonism between members of the working class. Meanwhile, faceless corporate executives remain shielded like mob bosses.
Recent viral images of Southwest agents getting yelled at and crying have resurfaced a valuable lesson about the nature of our economic system that’s worth examining this holiday season: the deliberate, built-in ways corporate “customer service” is set up to not only shield those on the top of the ladder—executives, vice presidents, large shareholders—but pit low-wage workers against each other in an inherently antagonistic relationship marked by powerlessness and frustration. It’s a dynamic we discussed in “Episode 118: The Snitch Economy—How Rating Apps and Tipping Pit Working People Against Each Other,” of the Citations Needed podcast I co-host, but I feel ought to be expanded on in light of recent events. Watching video after video, reading tweet after tweet, describing frustrated stranded holiday travelers yelling at Southwest Airlines workers, and hearing, in turn, accounts of airline workers and airport staff breaking down crying, is a good opportunity to talk about how none of this is natural or inevitable. It is a choice, both in corporate policy and government regulation.
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All of this is a toxic brew of mutual antagonism. “Customer satisfaction” is at a 17-year low, and the only human face people can take their frustration out on is a low-wage worker. Obviously there’s never an excuse to yell at anyone in customer service. The point is not a moral one—it’s that it's by design. Indeed, corporate executives very much want you to vent your frustration on their low-wage workers. This way you get the vague feeling of agency and control in a system designed to remove any and all forms of it. Southwest Airlines ticketing agents, cashiers at Nando’s Chicken, low-wage call center workers for Verizon overseas, become corporate sin eaters, absorbing all the frustration and anger brought about by our greasy, cost-cutting executives. Add to this the severe mental and physical harms—and death—laid at the feet of low wage workers during the pandemic, and our built-in system of mutual antagonism compounds dozens of other stressors.
We are conditioned to get mad at the human face we see before us, the “representative” of the company who personally profits nothing from our purchase. We are conditioned to get mad at the waiter when our food is late (and penalize this “bad service” with a bad tip) when the vast majority of the time it’s due to understaffing by a cheapskate boss. We are conditioned to get upset with the enforcer of arbitrary rules at a hotel checkout, despite it not being their rule at all. We are conditioned to be hostile to the very people we should have the most solidarity with.
Those who actually make the decisions remain protected like mob bosses, gently nestled between layers of middle management, lawyers, and marketing reps, impossible to reach by design. They have addresses and homes and phone numbers, you just don’t have access to them. And if you did, this would be stalking, and you’d likely get a visit from a police officer. Meanwhile they have all your information, and can hound you with credit agencies and just randomly steal your money. To the extent they face consequences, it’s a pointless fine that’s factored into their cost-benefit calculations at the beginning of the year. Recently, Wells Fargo was, again, found to have stolen or scammed billions from its working-class customers. Hertz Rent-A-Car settled for $168 million for getting dozens of its customers wrongfully imprisoned, leading one to miscarry her baby while in county jail. The punishment for both? A pointless fine. No one was even fired. Business churns on per usual. Meanwhile, those who steal from these very same corporations receive much more intimate punishments: arrest by police, long prison sentences. Their pictures, names and addresses published online for all to see forever.
More:
https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/southwest-airlines-christmas-meltdown
= new reply since forum marked as read
His speech was void of inflection and emotion. He appeared sedated as if he had taken a handful of anti-anxiety medications.
He was bland, cold and extremely ineffective. He wasn't even halfway sincere or believable. If he was supposed to "make it better" he was an epic failure. I wish I could find the interview.
If anyone’s got a link to it, please post it. Or DM it to me and I'll do it. TIA
Interesting post. Thanks, Wednesdays.
❤️pants
i say "Fuck Yeah!". The guy at the bottom ALWAYS gets the shit end of the stick. Management never has to deal with the biggest problems with the shittiest customers... they absolutely NEVER have to do any actual LABOR.
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