I was traveling last week, looking around the gateway at the airport at all the empty desks where there was no one to help me, not finding any ticket wallets at any of the desks, talking to employees who were too busy complaining to each other to be very interested in me, and I thought that I was witnessing the tip of the iceberg. The thought occurred to me that the United States in the 21st century will resemble Eastern Europe in the 20th.
I saw this idea reflected today in the post Overheard Comments from United Airlines Employees on Telstar Logistics. Here is the quote:
We’ve flown most of these airlines at least once during the last year or so, and the experiences are hard to differentiate: All were dismal. The aircraft are old, crowded, and uncomfortable, but most of all, we’ve grown weary of listening to airline cabin crew kvetching about their work schedules and grievances with senior management. This is what it must’ve been like to fly Aeroflot Soviet Airlines back in the Brezhnev Era.
The airline industry is going down the tubes in terms of even pretending it is in some kind of customer service business. As higher fuel prices affect other areas of the economy, we’ll see the dirty, poorly maintained workplace everywhere. As grocery stores (for example) can’t afford to compete on price or service and become unable to import huge varieties of fresh food from all over, we’ll see those conditions there, too, and I assume it will cascade to other areas of public and private life.