Steven Slater. Hundreds of thousands of people seem to approve of this former flight attendant for losing his temper and cursing out passengers on a recent flight. Many consider him a role model. But I think his patron-saint-of-disgruntled-employees status is both ridiculous and … barometric.
We’re all frustrated by the economy, our kids, our jobs (or lack thereof) and a million other things that go haywire in the daily grind of life. But to answer bad behavior with more bad behavior never solves anything, and the Steven Slater incident is just a telling sign of where we’ve arrived (and are probably still heading) as a culture.
Taking the higher road isn’t en vogue nowadays. Only wimps do it. But in taking a cue from Jerry Springer’s guests, reality TV “stars” and whatever other millions of lousy role models we have access to through media, we’ve lost something precious: love. Nowadays, doing unto others gets twisted into “hurt as you were hurt, and even more.” And instead of reining ourselves in, we “keep it real”—which is usually a guise for rudely venting angry opinions sans any concern for others’ well-being.
We all get tired of job stresses. And everyone is mistreated in some way, every day. But if we all “pulled a Slater” and let people have it whenever we’ve had enough, where would that get us?
I’ll be exploring the whole subject more in-depth in an Up Front article, which we’ll publish on Monday. I hope you’ll check it out.
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