View From The Wing shares a video of a woman on Southwest Airlines making unreasonable demands toward a flight attendant and justifying it on the basis of her disability. Sorry, but being hard of hearing does not justify being a jerk onboard.
Woman Mistreats Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant, Blames Her Disability
This is a very simple matter. Whether you are disabled or not, you must talk nicely to others, including flight attendants. Flight attendants are present to serve, but they are not enslaved people to order around. Just like in most situations, honey is better than vinegar to get what you want.
Onboard a Southwest Airlines flight, a passenger of size seated in the front row demands assistance from the flight attendant including:
- storing her bag
- fastening her seatbelt
- moving her son to sit next to her (Southwest has open seating)
- dealing with the passenger seated behind her “using God’s name in vain”
Her bevy of demands prompts the flight attendant to respond:
“I’m here to help, but I’m not going sit here and be berated.”
The woman then claims she is not berating her, but is hard of hearing, before demeaning again that she put her bag up. Here is the video:
@jaynithof23 This is so sad. Kudos to the flight attendants that kept their composure throughout the flight. #anotherkarensighting #southwest
My take: whether or not the woman is hard of hearing does not justify the way in which she barks orders at the flight attendant. The flight attendant did a remarkable job of keeping her cool.
CONCLUSION
The passenger, whose name is purportedly Karen, was out of line and that sort of behavior directed toward flight attendants is always uncalled. I understand the challenges of traveling while disabled, but that does not give us license to be rude about our needs (perceived or real…).
Perfect personification of America right there
This is why we shouldn’t have universal healthcare. I would rather pay more on my own than pay less but have this pig also covered and in the healthcare system
This passenger is more likely than not to be on Medicaid or Medicaid and Medicare.
The premise of Obamacare was when the then-President Obama said that if there was Obamacare, everyone would have a doctor and wouldn’t have to go to the emergency room for treatment. That would result in $2500/year cheaper health insurance for a family of 4. That sounded like fantasy then and proved to be entirely false.
The truth of the matter is that Medicaid is, in one respect, a Cadillac plan because there is zero co-pay and zero deductible so those who go to the emergency room before will continue to do so. The Governor of California begged President Obama to allow a $5 co-pay to reduce this abuse of resources but President Obama said “NO!”. $5 is extremely affordable for even those on Medicaid.
Currently, there is a type of universal health care in America today. Everyone is required to have health insurance or equivalent but it is no longer enforced by an IRS penalty.
She can’t be very hard of hearing if she could hear someone using Gods name in vain.
Very good point that someone should have called her on.
I strongly disagree that people who disabled themselves through obesity should even be called disabled. It’s offensive to real disabled people who had strokes, car accidents, etc.
I bet her other “disability” is Type 2 diabetes.
“a passenger of size”
Not relevant to the story.
If not caused by a medical condition (and we do know that deafness does not cause obesity), it shows a lack of self-control in how she lives her life, both in what she eats and what she says to others.
Pure BS and you know that Matthew. We’re seen many jerks on your website alone who are not obese at all. This person would have probably acted like an ass no matter what their body was like. I don’t what it is about overweight people that triggers you so much, but it’s not relevant to this particular incident.
“AARON”: Your wrong and literally NO ONE agrees with you. She can’t lean over/bend down to get her phone that SHE dropped. She can’t even buckle her seat belt. If she wants to be a malingerer and play “I have numerous disabilities”, then we can assume some of her behavior is due to being morbidly obsese. FACTS. Your probably obsese too, Y’all are known for obfuscation of reality.
Maybe her ear canals are “of size”, too, and are thus blocking the cochlear nerve from transmitting signals?
You gotta be pretty if you wanna be a bitch. Fat people are jolly for a reason; nobody likes a Karen, even less so a fat Karen. Either she needs to get prettier/thinner, or get nicer.
The woman was incapable of dealing with her seatbelt — possibly due to her size. Rather than being pleasant, she was nasty. She snapped when handed her phone & grabbed it.
Of course it is.
Being fat is a moral failing.
I am just LMAO here at this phrase from your article:
“The passenger, whose name is purportedly Karen,”
Buy a extra seat if you need more room. Pay for premium cabin seating or have a helper travel with you. Crew needs respect and cooperation from pax if the flts are going to be safe and pleasant.
Treating service personnel poorly reflects poorly on those who do.
Seems some of this could have been avoided if “Karen” had made her needs known by talking to the gate agent and arranged to be boarded early with her son. Her bag would have been stowed and her seatbelt fastened. Southwest is pretty good about helping passengers.
Sometimes Darwin takes too long to act.
Whether her real name is Karen or not, she’s definitely acting like a Karen
Southwest PAX . Did you expect something else? 🙂
To be honest @Mike, many of the more interesting stories tend to involve Spirit flights to/from Florida…
Unfortunately, America discriminates by treating disabled people BETTER than normal (or at least the judge/jury in the trial thinks so). Re: In the news, United has to pay 30 million dollars to a quadriplegic man.
I dont personally care that she’s fat. I dont know her. However, being unable to buckle her seat belt is likely due to her size and she then snaps at the FA over it. Rude passenger.
EVERYONE has a “disability” when at an airport/on a plane/heading to or from immigration. Wish the Govt would step in and teach these people a lesson. You can’t just willy nilly spray shoot all of Your “disabilities” as an excuse for being lazy and an awful human.
This reminds me of time someone (David Swindler) got trespassed for life from Walt Disney World because he got impatient on a phone call with the front desk and said that he could have built a meth lab in the length of time it took for his call to be answered. (A few years before that, a nearby motel burned down after a meth lab blew up – so it’s not surprising that Disney would react strongly to someone claiming they could build a meth lab.)
He made some follow-up videos about it where he claims over and over that he’s handicapped (how does this justify the inappropriate joke?), and he even claimed that he would have gotten in less trouble if he said “atomic bomb” instead of “meth lab”. (I’m pretty sure that would have gotten him into much more trouble, not less!)