Well the bozos running the company are out of touch with the operation and they''ve always been out of touch. Tucked away in their cubicles or offices, they''re quite in touch with statistics, most of which are fed to them by those at lower management rungs (the charade at all company levels is everyone want to look good to those they must report), i.e. "We cut x-number of staff, we saved x-amount of dollars" or "x-number of kiosks processed x-number of passengers, saving x-number of dollars." Meanwhile, it''s WE who must face a line of customers snaking farther than the eye can see, waiting for a total of two or three agents to process four full flights departing within a 90 minute period! This of course assumes none of these agents take their well-deserved and LEGALLY ENTITLED break!
Then I notice the company proudly tooting its horn over on-time STATISTICS (there''s that word again) or how we received top position on the Airline Quality Rating. Of course these don''t reflect today''s performance but rather past day''s performance. Plus being on top doesn''t equate excellence. All carriers could have poor service, with some worse than others.
The bottom line is those frustrated people waiting in line don''t give a damn whether we were on-time 79.3 of the time and the competition scored worse at 79.2, 79.1, 79.0, etc.
While we know conditions suck, people are mad, and that having only two agents staffing a counter, the demands of our jobs haven''t decreased. In fact, the few agents on duty simply can''t offer decent service no matter how much they would prefer doing so. Multi-tasking has its limits. Eventually one may have to do several things at the same time, but none will be done well.
One last thought. It also wouldn''t hurt if the training department (the people theoretically responsible for having capable agents), and management could see to it that agents truly know their jobs. If were going to have only two or three agents working the counter, it doesn''t help if with every third passenger, the agents don''t know what to do and either call the help desk or ask another agent for assistance. Suddenly those three agents are reduced to one or two every 10-15 minutes because someone doesn''t know how to handle a pet charge or even reissue a ticket. Training appears more focused upon covering the company''s a** from government rules than truly training. When we are "trained" every year about fire safety, via a computer lesson, something is wrong. There''s no way I''m going to learn how to operate a fire extinguisher by reading instructions on a monitor! I assume the company is fulfilling some government requirement and can document compliance. When it comes to agents knowing how to do their jobs, its the lowest of priorities. Three capable agents can handle a long line far better than two bad, one good. But then again, in the eyes of the company, three agents are equal to three agents, regardless of their quality. We''re just numbers (statistics) after all.
Whew. I feel much better now.
