Originally Posted by
TheProfessor
So saying goodbye to someone and being courteous to a gate agent is going to mask the problem of 100+ cancellations on a blue sky day, roger.
You’re acting like flying the contract and being nice to people is like walking, chewing gum, and doing brain surgery simultaneously. I’m not being an odd ball or doing anything different than what I see captains I fly with doing. I can assure you I will be the first to leave my hat behind if/when DALPA says to do it. My original point is that they seem to be encouraging flying the contact and just being nice to other people as opposed to being intentionally unpleasant “just to stick it to the company” as some have suggested here. I understand that is a minority opinion.
I think you’re conflating “being nice” with “going above and beyond” — which is exactly the way management wants it.
I treat passengers with courtesy and respect when approached. I accept flight deck visits when asked, especially for kids. I treat coworkers (across all divisions) with courtesy and respect as well.
I don’t wait around to say goodbye to every passenger at the end of every flight. I don’t stock up on trading cards. I don’t do any cabin PAs and I keep all other PAs to the absolute minimum. I don’t hand out “captain cards”, nor engage in awkward forced interactions with customers in hopes of being featured in the next Deltanet fluff piece.
None of those are things would make a customer say “that pilot wasn’t nice”. For the most part, they don’t even notice or care. Those duties are not required by our contract, nor do they fall within the industry-standard duties of an airline pilot.
However, management wants us to perform them, and they hate when we don’t.