Where can you spend $600 to be treated like crap? One word… Delta. Actually, I should address them by their formal title, Delta Airlines, which went out of its way to provide the perfect demonstration that small moments of crappy customer service can crescendo into hundreds of miserable people.  You may recall in an earlier article I swore never to patron this company again, but time required it and I was hopefully optimistic that perhaps, just maybe the tortured pleas of many a troubled traveler would have given them the epiphany that some semblance of employee training might be a good idea. But alas, Delta’s Detroit operation has demonstrated that common sense and general courtesy are about as common and general as Charlie Sheen at a men’s prayer breakfast.

Now, I am not writing this to purge my frustration over the hellish 24 hour long trip from TX to WV; it is to highlight that the smallest of actions on your job can easily make you a hero or a villain. I have long suspected that we have either lost the ability to see what is happening around us and make easy decisions or we are too afraid to speak up when surrounded by abject stupidity and blindness. I think it is the latter because too many of us have been conditioned to focus on “our job” and not step outside the field of vision, which is the computer screen in front of us. In my career, the people who climbed the ladder the fastest were the ones who pointed out that which common sense dictated and got others to see the light. In the case of Delta….well, I am getting ahead of myself.

Now, there will always be things that happen which we do not expect; in this case, a technical problem on an aircraft that required a new aircraft and a new crew. In Detroit, they had the aircraft but the crew was stuck in Nashville on another plane which also had technical problems. Ignoring the fact that technical problems with Delta aircrafts seem to be as common as the bags of peanuts they serve, the poor employee behind the terminal desk continues to tell us every fifteen minutes that our new departure time is being changed by another fifteen minutes. The fact that the crew we need is still stuck on the ground and someone just keeps phoning in a new estimated departure time is just the first annoying customer service paper cut. Common sense says, level with me and tell me “We have no idea when you are going home but once the crew is in the air we will have a better idea.” This would at least get me to accept the truth of my situation other than grasping at hope - fifteen minutes at a time - that one of the messages you tell me will be reality.

Then Delta, in a far too dramatic announcement, tells us we will receive a coupon for dinner because Delta loves us for being patient. So comes customer service paper cut number two, which is that the dinner coupon, while well intentioned, has a $6 limit. A cheeseburger happy meal at the airport Wendy’s is $7.95 and a single beer in the restaurant across the way is $8.50. So much for Delta’s “kiss, all better” approach to my situation.  Again I wonder if anyone within the organization has asked the question as to whether or not it is more offensive to promise a meal which will still end up costing the customer money or simply inform the customer that you would like to provide some assistance while they wait. It’s all in how you explain it.  And the customer service paper cuts continue…

Four hours later, our crew arrived to tepid applause at our gate. Here is where a simple act of common sense could have sent us all to a hotel two hours earlier. All of us climb onto the plane, along with our new crew, and it finally pushes back. We drive around the tarmac for a bit and then return to the terminal.  I wonder why, as does my other fellow members on this purgatory journey with me, and the answer comes in the form of our flight attendant quoting regulations that airline personnel can only work so many hours before they must take a rest. In other words, it’s time for the crew to punch out and go to bed. Did anyone in all of Delta think for a split second that the crew enroot to our location to fly us home would exceed their workday? Could this have been thought of before we boarded the plane or did the pilot just drive around a bit until the Fred Flintstone factory horn sounded and he yelled Yabba Dabba Doo for the door? Whatever the reason, we deplaned and were told they were expecting us at gate C2 which is code for the complaint desk. The line was two hours long and staffed by two Delta representatives who had all the compassion and patience of a grumpy five year old.  (I actually heard one of them tell a mother holding her two year old, “Look! I have had a long day… don’t tell me your problems!”)

I opted out of the line and sought help from my travel agency who confirmed my rebooking and a hotel for the night in about 6 minutes. No single incident would have prompted this article you are reading right now. It is the continued meat grinder experience which I and my fellow passengers were subjected to which became my inspiration. It came down to ownership of the problem and fixing it. Had any employee of Delta stepped up and made the call an hour before “We can’t get you home today, see you tomorrow” it would have been alright. Had employees received the ability to be empowered to make choices in the best interest of their customers, had any one person sought to communicate to me as something above a bacteria’s intelligence, had Delta grasped the culture that one clear thinking employee could have made a difference…. you would not have read this article. You would have learned how to trick your manager into getting a raise. Oh well, don’t blame me… blame Delta.

 Copyright © 2011 Mike Baumgartner | HR | Consulting | Coach |  Human Resources | Search - CEO, Worklife Survival Center LLC