

The Incompetence of American Airlines and the Fate of Mr. X - arjunlall
http://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html

======
noonespecial
The mistake Mr. X. made here was not about caring about his job or even
criticizing his employer. _He contacted an outsider, with his company's email
server, ostensibly on their behalf._ At bigco, you just can't do that folks.
_Everything_ that leaves corporate walls must be vetted by legal, (and
probably marketing too). There are lists of 100's (maybe 1000's by now) of
innocuous seeming words that you just can't use. Language, nationality,
gender, and racial issues all must be considered.

Like it or not, at Bigco International, _everything is a press release._

Personally, I would have given the guy a warning. What he said was quite
harmless and almost certainly common knowledge, but we don't know the whole
story here. He may have been warned before, or AA burned by this type of thing
before or both. Its unfortunate, but understandable. In the name of tolerance
and acceptance, we've built one of the most intolerant and litigious societies
ever. This is just one of the many sad side effects.

~~~
jf
Thanks, this is a great reminder: Work email is strictly for work, personal
email for everything else.

~~~
SwellJoe
Or: Don't work for mega-corps for which every email is a press release.

------
jrockway
Ouch. I have top-tier status on AA, and they will be getting a note from me
about this. Not cool.

That said, I am still confused as to why Dustin thinks AA's website is so
relevant to its business model. Their website is not very Web 2.0, it's true.
But, they make up for that... I can fly non-stop from Chicago (my home
airport) to thousands of cities around the world on AA quite cheaply. They
have three-class international service, which means I can use frequent flyer
miles to get a really nice seat once in a while. They have lounges. They have
international partners where my status benefits can be used. I get free
domestic upgrades to first class. They have customer service that cares. (I
have never been greeted by name on Southwest, but it happens rather frequently
on AA.)

So anyway, the legacies are not totally incompetent. I fly at least every
month and I would never even consider WN or JetBlue. The fare is about the
same, and I have no chance of receiving anything other than a middle-seat on
the back of a 737. No thanks. Perhaps the website UX is nice, but the rest of
the trip won't be. And when I'm in a metal tube for 18 hours, I don't really
give a damn about how much AJAX the website had.

(I am a little defensive here, I know. AA has been really nice to me, so I
feel that they deserve some compliments for that.)

~~~
potatolicious
_"Their website is not very Web 2.0, it's true."_

One of the original reasons why I disagreed with Dustin. Slick Web 2.0-y
goodness does _not_ imply a better user experience. Copious amounts of
whitespace is easy on the eyes, but also doesn't automatically imply
discoverability or readability. I know first-hand of at least one top-50
website that is very Web 1.0 but absolutely excels at what it does.

~~~
jfarmer
Amazon?

~~~
buugs
Google!?

~~~
donw
Hacker News?

~~~
techiferous
Craigslist?

~~~
bonaldi
RyanAir (especially apropos, albeit not top 50)

~~~
blahedo
imdb?

~~~
profquail
idk, my bff jill?

~~~
jrockway
Reddit?

~~~
profquail
My apologies...had a little too much coffee this morning. ;)

------
jasonlbaptiste
I hope Virgin hires this guy and makes a media event out of it. I will now
never fly American Airlines ever again in my life. This sincerely pissed me
off.

~~~
dschobel
Spare the boycott for a cause which merits it. AA just lost a competent and
passionate employee and announced themselves as a lousy place to work for
creative people.

~~~
jfager
Why spare the boycott? It's not like it's difficult to avoid buying American
Airlines tickets, and frankly, it sucks to fly with them anyways.

~~~
PostOnce
Rickety old planes and charging for things that are free on other airlines
(headphones, drinks). What's not to love? Did I mention the competent and
attractive staff?

~~~
pyre
> _Did I mention the competent and attractive staff?_

I realize that you're just trying to rag on AA, but I don't like the
implication that 'unattractive' people shouldn't be airline employees.

~~~
PostOnce
It's not the physical attractiveness of the staff I'm talking about, it's the
lack of enforcement of a dress-code/personal hygiene policy. AA is the Walmart
of airlines.

------
wakeless
Its amazing how someone so obviously passionate can be completely screwed over
by such bureaucracy. Do HR departments ever have humans running them?

~~~
michaelcampbell
Sadly, the sole purpose of an HR dept. is to keep a company from getting sued.
The bigger the company, the more that's their sole focus.

This guy admitting anything but the most perfect of environments and purity of
process, while not a firing offense to normal folk, opened a vector for the
possibility of the hint of something bad being done. So he had to go.

~~~
Confusion
_Sadly, the sole purpose of an HR dept. is to keep a company from getting
sued._

When that company is a US company, then yes, because of the sue-on-sight
culture that has grown there. The same thing wouldn't have happened if this
was Air France, Scandinavian Airlines or Iberia Airlines.

------
drusenko
A bit off-topic, but Dustin Curtis' site really _hurts_ my eyes reading on my
MacBook pro... I have a really hard time reading his text, and when I look
away, I have very pronounced stripe patterns in my vision.

~~~
DarkShikari
I have the exact reverse here. I _love_ sites and applications that use a dark
background; bright backgrounds are like staring into a lamp. It probably
depends on the environment you tend to read in; I usually read in a darker
room.

~~~
drusenko
I'm quite OK with a lot of dark sites, but this one produces an insane
"buzzing" feeling. Might have something to do with the gray-ish text. I
couldn't get through the entire article even if I wanted to.

I'm reading in a dark-ish room right now. I suspect it may have something to
do with the type of monitor used to view the site, because on mine the
physical effects are very pronounced.

~~~
potatolicious
I agree. I can't put my finger on it, but the white/red text on the page
positively _glows_ at me, not in a pleasant way either. It feels like I'm
staring at a lit light bulb.

------
nrr
From <http://dustincurtis.com/dear_american_airlines.html> (struck-out): "Fire
your entire design team, if you have one."

I guess AA took some of that advice to heart here.

I can only hope this guy does land a job someplace where the company culture
isn't completely and utterly fucked all across the board, all the way from the
hangar to the board room.

------
davi
More interesting to me, the email that got the guy fired:
<http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html>

An articulate explanation of how good intentions at big companies can often be
implemented only slowly.

~~~
adw
Also a good argument for never putting someone's email up directly on the Web
- you've got to paraphrase _if_ you think anyone might ever object to it.

And, yes, that's depressing.

~~~
kolya3
Also a good argument against using company email for personal correspondence.

"AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and
fired Mr. X on the spot."

~~~
danek
And try not to use a company computer for anything except work. Big corps
usually have spyware installed on their computers so they can track everything
you do.

The last place I worked had software that took a screenshot of your desktop
every so often, and the boss could remote into your machine to see what you
were up to. I didn't find out till my last day, it explained why he was so
good at busting us when we were on facebook

------
ghshephard
This is nothing but positive, actually. Someone who is passionate, thoughtful,
and caring about his trade will have a _much_ greater impact, career, and
reward at a different organization than the one described by
<http://dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html>

------
padmanabhan01
From the point of view of the management - this is someone who wrote an
article about the company having big time bureaucracy, lot of teams that don't
talk to each other and hinting that the company culture is all messed up.
well, what can one expect.

~~~
arohner
And firing him obviously confirmed that notion. AA just got Streisand'd

------
daleharvey
its ironic that he signed the reply off with

    
    
         Very truly yours (and hoping I don’t get fired for being completely incompetent),
    

but yeh I hope it turns out positive, the guy seems to have a good attitude
and is apparently talented, so will be nice to have people like that at
companies where I can actually get the benefits of someone caring about ui

------
dtran
IMHO, any employee not on the customer service team that reaches out to
customers should be awarded not punished, given that it's done somewhat
reasonably. In most cases filing a complaint with the customer service people
would get you nothing - you need to talk to the ux designer.

~~~
pyre
Maybe AA's customer service or PR team is unionized, and this was just a CYA
maneuver? (I realize that this is a _huge_ stretch, just saying...)

------
edw519
_AA searched their exchange database for the text I posted, found the guy, and
fired Mr. X on the spot._

As upsetting as this is, it's just not that big of a surprise. Some companies
take non-disclosure very seriously. Why didn't Mr. X just use gmail? I can't
imagine discussing any company's internals on their own email system.

OTOH, maybe Mr. X just committed corporate suicide by email. That's one way to
escape the insanity.

Thanks for the update, Dustin. I sure hope Mr. X lands on his feet fairly soon
and I applaud your contribution. I like to think that integrity still trumps
idiocy.

~~~
trevorbramble
I wondered that as well and assumed he used his corporate account to make his
identity claim more credible.

~~~
3pt14159
He could have emailed Dustin from gmail then told Dustin to make a throw away
email that he would email "hey Betsy, hope the trip went well. Did you bring
me back any chocolate from Switzerland?" Done. Verified and completely secure.

~~~
buugs
This however is an idea usually reserved for hindsight.

------
symptic
And this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a lesson in why establishing a
brilliant culture in your company is of utmost important. It's amazing to me
to see all the praises in this thread for JetBlue and would be interesting to
see a case study comparing the differences in culture between the two brands.

------
raquo
_> Very truly yours (and hoping I don’t get fired for being completely
incompetent)_

Last line from his email, ironically.

~~~
cakesy
That is not ironic. I expect people to use words they don't understand
anywhere else, but come on hacker news, I expect more from you and the people
who comment here.

------
dangoldin
I'm not sure why no one's mentioned this but isn't Dustin responsible for
having Mr X fired?

It seems the proper thing to have done would be to make the email untraceable
to Mr X rather than just anonymizing the name.

------
njn
_There's a common attribute that makes for good designers, good engineers,
good employees, and good companies. For a long time, I couldn't figure out
what it was. Was it practice? Was it skill? Was it innate ability? Turns out,
it's none of those. It's taste._

Steve Jobs also cited 'taste' as the fundamental difference between Apple and
Microsoft. His high-and-mighty attitude almost made me want to puke, as
Dustin's does here.

