Delta Flight Attendants are suing Land’s End over problems with the “Passport Plum” uniforms, and “They” are responsible.
Flight attendants have a hard job. They are the most customer-facing member of a very complicated and dangerous system that is a modern miracle. You can get anywhere in the world you want to go with 99.99999% safety, as long as you can pay for it, and are willing to put up with the most minimally tolerable conditions possible for a human for that length of time.
Everything you need to know about this important job can be learned from three episodes of The Twilight Zone.
In “Nightmare at 20,000 feet, a flight attendant tries to calm down no less heroic figure than Captain Kirk himself, who is convinced that a gremlin is taking apart the plane.
in “Twenty Two”, a terrified passenger runs shrieking from a plane because of the appearance of a creepy flight attendant whom she saw earlier in a dream
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In “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” the flight attendant has to calm down a plane load of passengers which mysteriously flies backward in time.
Also, keep in mind that since the “hardened cockpit” was invented after 9-11, it is the official policy of the airlines, and the FAA that if the cabin is stormed by bad guys, the flight attendants are expected to stay there and fight it out, while at the same time slinging soft drinks and selling little bottles of vodka to drunk Saints fans.
The decision of flight attendant “attire” is one part functionality, and another part marketing. Since these employees walk around in the terminal all the time, the uniform needs to project an image of competence and be consistent with the overall branding strategy of the airlines. As a result, these uniforms are supposedly selected with some care, and in coordination with the marketing department. Keep in mind that they have to look good after sitting around overnight stuffed into a bag and pulled out at 4 AM in Cedar Rapids so that they can be worn on the early flight to Atlanta. These particular uniforms are made by Land’s End and are treated with something to make them wrinkle-resistant. The current working theory is that the treatment is causing the reaction.
Herein comes the “Amorphous They”. In any organization, larger than about 75 people, it is possible for there to be employees who have authority, but no accountability. No one knows exactly who “they” are, but “they” make decisions that can affect everybody. In this case, “they” decided that it was time to re-do the uniforms. “They” formed a committee to select from various alternatives. “They” might have run them through the marketing department and the management to get approval of various options. “They” finally arrived on some focus-group-tested alternative that could be bought at some reasonable cost. The CEO may have approved it, but “they” did a lot of preparation work to weed out the less acceptable alternatives. “They” then made the cabin services people change over, no doubt at considerable expense. But what “they” apparently did not do was actually field test these things, to find out if they drive the employees crazy. That is because the flight attendants are more lowly on the authority/accountability scale, and “they” didn’t think about it that much.
I would be willing to wager a significant amount of money that no matter how long this is investigated, you would be hard pressed to identify the exact person within Delta, or within Land’s End for that matter, who made the decision to change over to these particular uniforms. “They” make decisions that are consequential, but somehow escape any sort of accountability. “They” never pour a drink, pin down a stinking thrashing customer, deal with in flight dogs, or otherwise have to actually work in these things themselves, but “they” still get to make the decision. No one is going to get fired.
How to solve it? You can’t. “They” are part of the human condition, and this sort of thing has been going on since the stone age.
The best thing that can be done is before the next uniform change, round up the committee, or department, or whoever is in charge of this, and make them run the Atlanta Half Marathon wearing these things before putting a single one on a flight attendant, to see how comfortable they are.
