Is “Joe” An Extremist Or A Role Model?

I am not usually one to be chatty with my seat mates on airplanes. But this past week turned out to be an exception. I was fortunate to be upgraded on an American Airlines flight. I sat next to an average looking, late-50s guy that I will call Joe, since I didn’t get his real name. Joe has made it his personal mission to raise hell with American.

While I am not a fan of this airline I fly them regularly out of convenience and because they are the preferred airline for my company. Joe flies with them often out of necessity, but I think he also enjoys every opportunity to raise hell with them over their poor customer service. Here is a list of the things Joe told me he has done against American:

• Joe know the name and background of every member of American’s Board of Directors and he has written or called all of them to complain on multiple occasions. It sounded like those conversations were usually confrontations.
• He talked of numerous conversations with American’s head of Public Relations, complaining that the person was incompetent and refused to acknowledge any issues by the airline.
• He has attended numerous Shareholder meetings in an attempt to disrupt management’s speeches and point out their terrible record on numerous airline performance measures. He said he bought 100,000 shares of the company’s stock so they would not be able to keep him from attending these meetings or flying their airline.
• Perhaps the most outrageous, and my personal favorite, after sitting too long on the runway with a longer wait expected before takeoff, he asked the flight attendant to tell the captain to return to the gate so he could change airlines.  When the attendant told him that request could not be honored he told her that he felt like he was having a heart attack and needed immediate medical attention. Both he and the flight attendant know that he was not having a heart attack but the pilot had no choice but to return to the gate. Once there he said he felt better, refused medical treatment, and bought a ticket with another airline.

Are Joe’s actions appropriate steps by a reasonable but frustrated passenger, or over-reactive tactics by a nutcase? We can each decide for ourselves if Joe took inappropriate steps to voice his complaints. My opinion is he has gone too far and treated people disrespectfully in his zealous mission to create havoc. But I also believe that bad customer service is epidemic in this country and most consumers have come to expect it and accept it.  We grumble but we don’t invest our time and energy trying to force change.

Maybe we should all be a little more like Joe.