An Alaska Airlines flight attendant claims she lost her job for posting a video on TikTok of her twerking in uniform. Does the punishment fit the crime?
Alaska Airlines Flight Attendant Fired For Twerking. In Uniform. Onboard 737. Then Posting It On TikTok.
Nelle Diala was a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines. In November 2024, she posted a video on TikTok that quickly went viral. She was twerking. In uniform. On an Alaska 737 aircraft.
@_jvnelle415 Cant even be yourself anymore, without the world being so sensitive. Whats wrong with a little twerk before work, people act like they never did that before. #fyp #flightattendantlife 4evaa #discrimnationisreal
For the innocent among us, twerking is dancing to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.
She captioned the 15-second clip, “Ghetto till I die, don’t let the uniform fool you.”
Alaska Airlines did not like the video…and fired her (according to Diala) for violating the carrier’s social media policy.
She left the video up, but has now changed the caption, alleging discrimination:
Cant even be yourself anymore, without the world being so sensitive. Whats wrong with a little twerk before work, people act like they never did that before. #fyp #flightattendantlife 4evaa #discrimnationisreal
My reaction:
I’m a millennial but you might as well call me a boomer in terms of my outlook on life. And would you ever catch me twerking? No. But was this a “sexually provocative” dance? I mean, I guess…at the end. Thanks Elvis Presley…
But while I may roll my eyes at “the youth of today” this sort of thing is so commonplace these days that my sense of outrage is dulled.
Do I want my daughter twerking one day? Heavens no. Is it professional? Not by historical norms. Does it rise to the level of being a firable offense? Yes, if that is what Alaska’s social media policy warns. Therefore, was she on notice and should she have known better? Yes and yes. But fired for this? I’m only speaking for me, but I’d likely show mercy…
Even so, she’s not a victim and I find no basis to conclude that Alaska Airlines “discriminated” against her for any other reason than her poor choice to post that video. Yes Nelle, discrimination is real: every choice we make is an act of discrimination.
It’s another warning for all of us: we must guard what we post on social media. And for employees, that warning carries all the more weight…
Where do you draw the line? If there are no standards in Uniform or when in professional settings it just degrades from there. Sorry, she should have known better. It’s not rocket science to figure out what is appropriate and not. Not that U.S. flight attendants are rocket scientists.
She will be fine. She will launch on Only Fans and succeed from there. Until she is 40 and no one cares and her earlier content haunts the second half of her life.
@Antwerp … Key phrase is “in professional settings” .
( Although I’ve glimpsed a few events at Holiday parties which were far beyond risque , but I averted my eyes just in time . I wouldn’t wish to be shocked .)
Every company should have the right to require that their employees behave professionally and use good judgement when in uniform and on company property.
This FA did not do that. My opinion of Alaska as a professional organization would be diminished if she was not immediately terminated.
What she does on nights and weekends is none of my business.
@rjb … key phrase is “when in uniform and on company property” .
Should have been fired for the “ghetto” quote alone. And you wonder why we can’t get a refill!
@Dave … Don’t wish her handling my food or drink . Perhaps she makes “rap” noise ?.
@Dave … Better to bring your own favourite food for the flight .
Has anyone checked if she’s not former Hooter Air FA ?
An advice to any student….
Follow the rules. Don’t offend others. Don’t go overboard with social media. When in your first job (or if in law school, medical school, architecture school, or anything with life long professional implications), act wisely, especially in the beginning. Do not think there is free speech in America where you can say anything. You will not be jailed for writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper but it could affect your career. Be wise.
She self-identified as “Ghetto till I die, don’t let the uniform fool you” and should probably go to work for Spirit or some trashy euro ultra-low cost; she’d be more at home. Her behavior in uniform at the workplace was not appropriate and should be condoned.
I have seen several Alaska flight attendants on TikTok/Insta that regularly post themselves in uniform dancing on planes. In at least one case, the official Alaska Airlines account follows them and has commented positively on their videos.
None of them seem to have gotten fired. It is true that none of them seem to be black, but I’m not making any allegations of causation.
Spirit would love to have her a their new spokesmodel.
One has to wonder about the managers and HR professionals working at companies like this.
What’s the ROI on getting rid of someone who has cost you money to train and is sufficiently dependable and well-performing to pass their probation? Is it worth the risk of having to defend a legal claim and paying for the lawyers? Are the actions of that person so damaging to the company as to warrant the management time to select a replacement and invest the same again without guaranteed results?
Are these people really acting in the interests of shareholders, or is it a simple case of wanting to appear powerful to their colleagues?
Yes, she should be fired.
Here’s the thing: we’re all making moral judgments as to whether she should have been terminated. But that’s not how AS would have handled it. They would have looked at the terms of employment that everyone agrees to. Every employer has rules. Clearly, her posting this to social media violated these rules such that AS felt that they had cause to terminate her. They may also be fighting her unemployment claim, though their ability to do that depends on the state in which she would claim it.
Basically, it was considered a serious enough breach of company policy that “I didn’t know” wasn’t a satisfactory answer because she should have known.
Remember folks, these are the people we need to rely on in case of an emergency.
Yes. Please fire anyone who engages in any sort of behavior like this…
What is this, footloose? You guys are a bunch of sexless prudes
If you’re going to cite movies, consider “Blast from the Past”. It’s a generational confrontation type of film where a young man who had lived in a fallout-shelter with his parents his whole life emerges from the early 1960’s to the 1990’s and finds society wildly different than he had imagined.
One interesting aspect was dancing: In the early 1960’s, men knew how to dance in an aesthetic manner and with a partner. In the Disco era, freestyle dancing became the norm and while some were quite talented at it (such as John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever), largely it degenerated into just jiggle-in-place similar to twerking.
In Footloose, Kevin Bacon’s character at least had dancing talent.
My father met my mother in a dance hall in 1958. Dancing back then was highly social and it was one of the main ways people met back then. Our dance culture, and social interactions, have severely devolved.
FYI, I’m as gregarious in public as I am online due to intentional practice to read return body language and socialize. I consider teaching my daughter socialization skills as valuable as academics or even athletics.
It’s really quite simple; at some point this Alaska airlines employee signed an acknowledgment regarding Alaska airlines social media policy which forbid her to behave in this manner while representing her employer. It is puzzling that she does not understand why she was fired.
It’s equally puzzling how some readers here are just as stupid as the employee.