May 7, 2008
JFK Employees Get Schooled in "Nice"
Like Starbucks baristas before them, airline workers are going back to school...or at least mandatory training sessions. JFK airport is gearing up for a busy summer of travel, and they're preparing to meet delays and frustrated airline passengers head-on, and with a happy face.
At least 500 employees are getting "nice" training; from the AirTran to the parking lot to the ticket booth, travelers should be greeted with a smile -- albeit a forced one. Training started yesterday, with a lesson in resiliency.
"Those who help travelers help themselves," Tom Murphy, told the first students yesterday in the program run by the Human Resiliency Institute at Fordham University. "The travelers will be happy and you will go home more rested at the end of the day."Murphy plans to roll out the program nationwide, and says that Newark and LaGuardia are already showing interest. Complaints reached an 8-year-high last year, and with American Airlines canceling thousands of flights last month, and the whole Carol Anne Gotbaum and faux-bomb incidents -- training may be arriving just in time (unlike 41% of flights into JFK last year!).
The sage advice for those on the frontline boils down to staying calm and keeping one's voice down even as the passenger's goes up. Executive director for the Coalition for an Airline Passengers Bill of Rights, Kate Hanni, commented on the program, saying, "I think it would be a short term solution but it's not going to solve a lot of the problems. They need to bring in more employees now more then ever."
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Yet another thing wrong w/ air travel today - no hot stewardesses in short shorts.
Goddamn, why can't stewardesses look like that anymore?
Did the planes back then have cages for the stewardesses to dance in?
it's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.
American carriers should take tips from Singapore Airline's 'Singapore Girls'
The best FA's in the air, plus they are hot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Girls
Seriously, that's image is one vintage look that needs to be reinstated.
It was about time JFK employees at all levels get trained on NICE. You always knew you arrived in NY by the attitude of the employees you had to deal with upon returning from vacation.
Fact is our airports are dumps. Compared to other countries our airports are small, dirty, uncomfortable, crowded, old and therefore: unfriendly.
Add to this the lack of PROFESSIONAL, TRAINED security and we have a cesspool.
american airlines should take some advice...
Having to "be nice" to people and "smile" is incredibly stress-inducing. Their unions have a legitimate beef, they should sue. And those skimpy outfits on stewardesses in america, where 55yr old women fought for and won the right to keep on as air hostesses? It wouldn't be Miss USA out there...