a man standing in front of a group of people in blue uniforms

A veteran United Airlines flight attendant has complained that most junior hires are “unanimously hated” by colleagues and labeled them as not only lazy, but prone to bully veteran flight attendant who wish to offer a higher level of service.

Veteran United Airlines Flight Attendant Unloads On New Hires

In response to a passenger complaint about onboard service on Reddit, a United flight attendant went on a (now-deleted) rant:

“The new hires we’ve been getting the last few years are, for the most part, unanimously hated amongst the entire workgroup. You can’t generalize every single one, of course, but for every good one, there’s 10 awful embarrassing godawful ones. They aren’t hired for their attention to class, etiquette, professionalism, service, etc. like it once was. A scary amount of these people only have Taco Bell and McDonald’s as prior work experience on their resume.

“They are lazy, cannot manage to get through a flight without an airpod in their ear, have no sense of decorum, and find any passenger request to be an inconvenience. If you’re an FA hired during the days of class and decorum, and you’re working with 3 other post-covid hires, they’ll go on and on about how you “do way too much for the passengers.” and try to bully you…getting paid nearly $70/hr to hand out drinks with a smile is easy f*cking work. They do nothing but undermine the rest of the professionals in the workgroup.

“Sorry that you had this experience. My only advice would be to humble them and call them out on their BS. If UA wants to be the biggest & best, they need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to hiring standards. It is absolutely appalling what’s making its way through.”

There’s one glaring error here that I must point out at the outset: new hires are not paid $70/hour. I suppose many will dismiss the entire post based on that, but I still want to discuss the other claims.

Where United Airlines Missed A Golden Opportunity

Without over-generalizing, I’ve been flying enough over the last four years to notice a trend among new hires. Most are not bad at all, in my estimation, but also are not great either. Generally speaking, there is little 1K recognition, addressing by surname, and proactive drinks refills, which are the three things I appreciate most when flying in first class (which thankfully is most of the time).

You’re much more likely to get that from a veteran flight attendant than a new hire…again, I’m speaking generally.

But I don’t necessarily blame them for that if they have not been taught that this is what they must do. Are flight attendants taught during their orientation and initial training to address guests by name when taking meal orders? To proactively hang coats? To say thank you for your business prior to landing?

These are all little things, but they make a huge difference in terms of whether I remember a flight as “just fine” versus “excellent.”

Thus, my issue is not that United is hiring bad folks who are lazy or incompetent, but rather that United missed a huge opportunity to improve culture and standardize service in an upward direction during the pandemic-era turnover. That was the chance…and it seems that ship has sailed.

Maybe with a new contract will come new stipulations and standards for inflight service: I certainly think United would benefit and passengers would appreciate a more standardized approach when it comes to personalized greetings. I also think that would actually make the job easier for flight attendants and ultimately increase morale because passengers do respond well to such service.

CONCLUSION

While the veteran United flight attendant seems far too critical of new hires, I do think there have been missed opportunities as United has greatly improved in other ways over the last few years. Elevating service (beyond Delta and JetBlue) should be a goal of “United Next” and even in an organization as large as United (over 25,000 flight attendants), this is possible through conscientious and repeated training.

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