The few times I watch television these days is either when the footy’s on or the rare occasions that I surface from my interweb connected man cave and stumble into a room where someone has a TV running.
And so it was tonight when I happened to wander out to witness a terrible airport “reality” show – this one being an unoriginal, third rate Australian effort where Tiger Airlines shows how it stuffs around and humiliates its passengers. In Australia, Channel Seven considers this to be prime-time TV “entertainment”.
What was striking about the show was how Tiger Airlines’ check in staff humiliated a pensioner and her young son who hadn’t printed out their boarding passes.
The “fee” for not carrying out a basic task which reasonable people would expect would be part of an airline’s service is $25 a head at Tiger Airlines – one could ask what the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s position is on excessive fees being used to pad airlines’, or banks’, profits but that would be asking too much of Canberra’s worlds best practice doughnut munchers.
As result the poor lady was expected to front up with another $50 – money she didn’t have. So Tiger Airlines’ check in staff wouldn’t let her board and Channel Seven’s camera crew gleefully filmed her desperate tears and shocked son.
Eventually a bystander took pity on her and gave her $60. At least someone in the terminal had some decency and compassion, qualities neither the Tiger Airlines staff or Channel Seven camera crew have in the tiniest way.
No doubt somewhere in an anonymous glass tower some arsehole has a job as a manager at Tiger Airlines and has a KPI that includes how many poor mothers they can reduce to tears.
When the arsehole Tiger Airlines manager gets its annual bonus for making the required number of victims passengers weep, it no doubt goes to lunch with the Channel Seven executives – another bunch of arseholes – to slap each others’ backs and tell themselves what great heroes of capitalism they are.
The question that bugs me is when did it become acceptable to humiliate your customers? No doubt Tiger Airlines think it’s good publicity and Channel Seven think it is good entertainment.
We live in interesting times when our business leaders think it isn’t good enough just to take customers’ money but that it’s also necessary to humiliate them as the managements of both Channel Seven and Tiger Airlines seem to be rewarded for doing.
Fortunately in these corporatist days we still can vote with our wallets and turn off the muck we find offensive – that’s why decent people shouldn’t choose to fly Tiger Airlines or watch Channel Seven.