Bad Attitude

I never write a letter or make a phone call to complain about something that has happened but today I did.

Last night we came in to Newark on Continental Airlines from Colorado.  Newark was fogged in which caused serious delays.  We boarded our plane in Colorado 1 1/2 hours later than scheduled.  I’d rather be sitting in the airport than on the tarmac so we just hung out and waited to board.  We finally arrived in Newark about 2 hours later than we had hoped.

Luggage always takes the longest.  Our bags arrived and once we had scooped them up we walked over to get the one ski bag that we had brought back.  In hindsight I should have fed-expressed that bag back because there was nothing that anyone needed for a few weeks.  We got to the gate where over sized bags are distributed.  There was one woman working the ski bag area.

The bags get tossed through the plastic walls from the bag handlers on the other side.  Then the person working that area needs to bring them out to the customers waiting behind the line.  The woman working this shift had a serious bad attitude.  She could care less about helping us.  She was just chatting away on her cellphone.  When the bag handler started pushing the bags through, he told her to get off her phone.  She didn’t.  She just kept on talking and took one bag at a time over to the customers who have been at the airport for about an hour and were 2 hours delayed to begin with.  The customers were talking among themselves about her getting off the phone.  Josh even yelled out, "use 2 hands"!  It was quite incredible.

When we were driving home, I told the kids I was going to complain about that woman.  The reason why is simple.  There are many immigrants who would die to get a job to better their life in America or people who would be thrilled to have that job to get a weekly pay check to put food on the table for their family.  It might be a boring job, it might be a crappy job but it is a job.  Do your job with a good attitude.  You should be happy you have it.  I told the kids that at one point you are going to have a job that you might not like, working in a retail store, cleaning up the back rooms, folding merchandise, camp counselor for 4 year olds when you expected to get 12 year olds, phone duty for an organization, whatever it might be, do it with a smile on your face.  Be glad you have the job because there are plenty of people who’d like that job.  Only you can better your life.

They totally got it and agreed. 

So, I made the call today.  They were very appreciative of the phone call.