Going out with a bang

I honestly thought there would only be one classic "fuck you I quit" story today. But this is apparently a day where the gifts keep on giving because we have two of them.

First up we have Steven Slater, who is now a god among lesser men. The manner in which he choose to quit is going to become the stuff of legend. He told off an unruly passenger, grabbed a beer and activated the emergency evacuation chute, jumped down it and then marched over to his car and drove home. Where the police promptly arrested him two hours later. Apparently they were marching him out of his house, he had a big smile on his face.

I think my favourite quote from the story came from his next door neighbour and a former flight attendant - “Enough is enough – good for him,” Bavasso said. “If he would have called me, I would have picked him up.”

There is just so much deeply wrong with air travel these days. Lord knows I've complained about the airlines and the way they treat customers and occasionally some awful service from staff. The one thing I forgot to mention in all of this is the increasing number of dicks who fly.

During our trip to Florida over Easter I was constantly looking at Cathy with a shocked look in my eye over the behaviour of passengers. They were being rude to each other, bringing in carry-on bags the size of cars, disobeying the instructions of the flight attendants (how many times do they need to say stay seated until the plane stops?) and just a level of obnoxiousness I found hard to believe.

Are people becoming more obnoxious or are the airlines making them that way with the nickel and diming? I don't know. And yes, there are some bad flight attendants, but I think most of them are just caught in between the airlines contempt for passengers and trying make a buck and the passengers contempt for airlines and being tired of being gouged. However, Slater, I think, finally got caught in the middle one too many times. It probably didn't help he was working for Jet Blue, a bargain basement airline.

Still, Slater is going to become very famous now because people love him and wish they could do something similar. I suspect he's going to become the patron saint of flight attendants. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if others snap in similar ways.

And just to give you an idea of how big he's going to be, I give you, no shit, the awesomeness that is The Ballad of Steven Slater. God, I love the Internet.

Still, the way this woman decided to leave work, while not as dramatic, does earn points for funny, clever and fucking over your boss. Sending a 33 slide photo presentation while holding a white board explaining why you're going, why your boss sucks and ratting out his bad internet habits all in one message does have a certain charm.

I guess if you have to go, there is something to be said for doing it in a dramatic and funny way.

Last Five
1. Down in the basement - Sloan
2. Give it away - Red Hot Chili Peppers
3. Silver lining - Rilo Kiley
4. Nineteen forever - Joe Jackson
5. Don't look back in anger (live) - Tori Amos*