A veteran United Airlines flight attendant has complained that most junior hires are “unanimously hated” by colleagues and labeled them as not only lazy, but prone to bully veteran flight attendant who wish to offer a higher level of service.
Veteran United Airlines Flight Attendant Unloads On New Hires
In response to a passenger complaint about onboard service on Reddit, a United flight attendant went on a (now-deleted) rant:
“The new hires we’ve been getting the last few years are, for the most part, unanimously hated amongst the entire workgroup. You can’t generalize every single one, of course, but for every good one, there’s 10 awful embarrassing godawful ones. They aren’t hired for their attention to class, etiquette, professionalism, service, etc. like it once was. A scary amount of these people only have Taco Bell and McDonald’s as prior work experience on their resume.
“They are lazy, cannot manage to get through a flight without an airpod in their ear, have no sense of decorum, and find any passenger request to be an inconvenience. If you’re an FA hired during the days of class and decorum, and you’re working with 3 other post-covid hires, they’ll go on and on about how you “do way too much for the passengers.” and try to bully you…getting paid nearly $70/hr to hand out drinks with a smile is easy f*cking work. They do nothing but undermine the rest of the professionals in the workgroup.
“Sorry that you had this experience. My only advice would be to humble them and call them out on their BS. If UA wants to be the biggest & best, they need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to hiring standards. It is absolutely appalling what’s making its way through.”
There’s one glaring error here that I must point out at the outset: new hires are not paid $70/hour. I suppose many will dismiss the entire post based on that, but I still want to discuss the other claims.
Where United Airlines Missed A Golden Opportunity
Without over-generalizing, I’ve been flying enough over the last four years to notice a trend among new hires. Most are not bad at all, in my estimation, but also are not great either. Generally speaking, there is little 1K recognition, addressing by surname, and proactive drinks refills, which are the three things I appreciate most when flying in first class (which thankfully is most of the time).
You’re much more likely to get that from a veteran flight attendant than a new hire…again, I’m speaking generally.
But I don’t necessarily blame them for that if they have not been taught that this is what they must do. Are flight attendants taught during their orientation and initial training to address guests by name when taking meal orders? To proactively hang coats? To say thank you for your business prior to landing?
These are all little things, but they make a huge difference in terms of whether I remember a flight as “just fine” versus “excellent.”
Thus, my issue is not that United is hiring bad folks who are lazy or incompetent, but rather that United missed a huge opportunity to improve culture and standardize service in an upward direction during the pandemic-era turnover. That was the chance…and it seems that ship has sailed.
Maybe with a new contract will come new stipulations and standards for inflight service: I certainly think United would benefit and passengers would appreciate a more standardized approach when it comes to personalized greetings. I also think that would actually make the job easier for flight attendants and ultimately increase morale because passengers do respond well to such service.
CONCLUSION
While the veteran United flight attendant seems far too critical of new hires, I do think there have been missed opportunities as United has greatly improved in other ways over the last few years. Elevating service (beyond Delta and JetBlue) should be a goal of “United Next” and even in an organization as large as United (over 25,000 flight attendants), this is possible through conscientious and repeated training.
Take a look at the UA subreddit and you’ll see consistent complaints about senior international crews. While I do feel some new hires aren’t the best about certain aspects of service like you mentioned, you’re right that new hires receive a lot less service training than they used to. As of last year new hires received one day of domestic first/economy training and one day of Polaris training. And that training is extremely limited, in the Polaris training they don’t even teach how to uncork a wine bottle with the bottle opener they have on board! Which may seem simple but to a 21 year old who barely just started drinking it might not be. Meanwhile up into the late 2000s they had international training flights. I think that most new hires genuinely mean well, there are some lazy ones sure but that can be said for any seniority. Also some senior FAs teach bad habits…as a new hire I was told at times I was “doing too much” by trying to provide proactive service or coffee service in economy. It doesn’t bother me but I just had to laugh at this accusation of new hires being “unanimously hated”.
I worked in pharmacy and I can say the training there is abysmal, left to you to figure out while being yelled at and demeaned because you’re now a convenient target for coworkers’ own pent up bad energy. Companies like to make, not spend, money, and it becomes like a drug addiction where they undermine their quality by falling flat on training. Company doesn’t care at all
The combination of UA’s DEI hiring policies plus having to deal with a generation that as noted on the post above is universally known to be lazy and incompetent is the perfect storm for this outcome. Add to that an overall level of entitlement given to FAs in the last decade or so where they think they are more important than the passengers they are serving, has totally destroyed what we used to call customer service. There is a reason the younger generations are called “lost generations”. They rely on social media to vent their “frustrations”, can’t have a face to face conversation with anyone, have no sense of behavioral skills, feel entitled to work from home, have zero level of respect to others and think they know it all because they watched some stupid video on TikTok. Most of them are absolutely useless and will need to suck the Government to survive. However, when there is chaos, there is an opportunity. I think these generations being so bad opens a huge opportunity for those from the same generations that were raised with strong family values and know how to respect others. To be honest, it is one of the best generations to be part of because if you were raised right and are smart enough you will thrive in your life facing very little competition.
Another racist who thinks the problem is having a staff that reflects the customer base.
There is nothing racist about hiring based on merit. DEI itself is the most racist concept of our time. I’ll be happy to see it end. We need to go back to a merit and skill based system. No one should be excluded or chosen on the basis of their race or gender. Sounds like you are throwing baseless accusations around. United and all of the other places with ESG based nonsense should be sued to kingdom come for the last decade of this illegal practice.
Sounds like a job that would make me wanna jump outa the airplane
I wonder what recruitment numbers are like? Maybe this is the best of what’s knocking on their door. And we all know laziness and poor service has plenty of company in the senior ranks too.
I totally agree the newbees I have seen do not have a clue about customer service..It is sad..tho some other hires are just as bad.. I was on a 4+ hour flight last week and the FA’s were over the top in service,friendiness, and lots of checking on if anyone needed anything. On my return 4 hour+ trip back it was sooo different.. we had a mix of new and seasoned FA’s but no service like on the way out…totally opposite …I wrote to DL about the crew on the way out and gave positive compliments…
Why are you people misconstruing what this FA said? It is so obvious that the $70/hr comment is in reference to THEMSELVES, not new hires:
“ If you’re an FA hired during the days of class and decorum, and you’re working with 3 other post-covid hires, they’ll go on and on about how you “do way too much for the passengers.” and try to bully you…getting paid nearly $70/hr to hand out drinks with a smile is easy f*cking work”
They’re saying: “I’m being paid almost $70/hr to hand out drinks with a smile, it’s the least I can do, yet my junior coworkers go on about how I ‘do too much’ “
They never said new hires are being paid $70/hr.
Oh okay. That makes sense. I didn’t read it that way, but I see your point.
Yep, that’s they way I read it too.
A bit of gaslighting here. I find the younger hires at least a bit more enthusiastic. The seniors in fact could often care less. It’s interesting how she twists this around completely. Basically, in the U.S., they are almost all bad. Dismal in fact.
@Antwerp … +1 . Bingo . It is rather Rare to find one good FA . Group behaviour begets identical Group behaviour .
As a United Platinum, I agree 100% with Antwerp. Hard to find a good flight attendant any more…but when you do find one, you always remember him/her. My last really good attendant was Chicago-Honolulu 2 years ago.
Break the backs of the unions.
Airlines should be able to outsource their inflight crews like cruise ships do.
Get some hot asian women, not these ugly old ass blacks and crakers.
“Blacks and Crakers” sounds like a law firm straight out of Nicholas Nickleby.
United arguably has the worst reserve system in the country and except, perhaps for Denver and Las Vegas all of the bases are in some of the most expensive cities in the country. Basically, at the behest of AFA (who demands contract the meet the needs of senior flight attendant) United has created a situation where nobody actually wants to work for them…so the only choice they have is to hire people from Taco Bell or McDonalds. United F/As and AFA have made their own bed…
You’re not so far off.
Junior FAs really need a union to advocate for them instead of buying into the “put in your time and you’ll be like us” card…
I guess you haven’t flown American anytime recently. No eye contact. No smile. No interaction. Just robotic.
Waddayawannadrink? instead of May I get you a beverage?
“They are lazy, cannot manage to get through a flight without an airpod in their ear, have no sense of decorum, and find any passenger request to be an inconvenience.” Quite so in my experiences. Dare I say, “entitlement?”
“veteran flight attendant who wish to offer a higher level of service”
I was 1K for a few years about 10 years ago. I never encountered a “veteran flight attendant who wish to offer a higher level of service”. If anything, the “veteran” FA’s were generally grouchy hags who resented their job responsibilities.
My worst Polaris flights have all been due to the rude and apathetic (putting it nicely) service from senior FAs. I’ll take a mediocre new FA than the entitled and unpleasant senior ones
Pay basic wages get basic people ♂️. UA needs higher service standards and entry pay. Maybe make the first 4 years at will?
I still remember an A319 in F when 8 people. FA sees my coat and points to the hangers and informs everyone that this is a “self-service coat hanging flight”.
As a Platinum, I find the opposite to be true (tho I still love my old timers that care about service) I think it’s just people, some suck.
“… addressing by surname, …”
This always makes me cringe a bit when a FA does it.
Why? It’s a great gesture.
It might be a generational thing, but the training school has a lot to do with it. Yes, safety is always the number one priority, but you also need basic service skills like getting the cork out of a bottle, and appreciating that the passengers have paid real money (or used their points) to fly, and it’s reasonable to expect some quality inflight service. The training is obviously lacking. Perhaps the entire cabin-crew training hierarchy needs to attend SQ bootcamp training for a refresher?