Yeah well, I’m sure we’ll somehow manage to bomb our way out of it!
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American Airlines’ response to that video is some bullshit:
“We recognise how important it is to support the independence of customers with disabilities by ensuring the proper care of mobility devices throughout their journey with us,” an American Airlines spokesperson told USA Today.
“This visual is deeply concerning and we are gathering more details so that we can address them with our team. We will continue to work hard to improve our handling of assistive devices across our network.”
I get that sometimes you need to give a “This is important and we will investigate” noncommittal answer, but this is not one of those times. What’s in that video is 100% unacceptable and there is no excuse for it. The only response should have been that, followed by “The baggage handlers involved have been fired, and we are mandating training company wide about how to best serve our customers with disabilities.” There’s no need for wishy-washy bullshit statements here. What are the employees going to say? “Well there wasn’t a policy saying we couldn’t do that.”? Come on.
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This will be the third year in a row more than 500 homeless people have died in San Diego County
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Wait, is that a dead fox being shaken back and forth by a live human?
Working as intended.
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maybe i’m wrong, but from what i watched i don’t blame the worker.
a wheelchair is thirty plus pounds with low friction, and an angular, hard to predict shape. i, as a potential baggage handler make $18 an hour, don’t want to be injured, and probably have not great health insurance and comp.
the airline, in their wisdom, has determined the best way of protecting worker health and people’s belongings profit is to shoot heavy objects out of a plane at high velocity?
they’ve designed the situation to fail
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Maybe it’s different in the US (though I can’t imagine it is) but isn’t it the airport that is responsible for baggage handling? Really, all they needed to do is say “This is unacceptable, but not up to us. Take it up with the baggage handling contractor the airport employs”
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The workers did that to three wheelchairs in a row and were laughing about it. The person filming pulled out their phone after the first two. This wasn’t an ergonomics workplace thing. They did it because they thought it was fucking funny. They’re supposed to walk the wheelchairs down the stairs right next to the ramp.
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Leaving us with only the totally fucked up ending from the TV series. I hate that.
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I really need some good news, like this will be done soon…
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I have already resigned myself to the likelihood that the series will not be finished until, sadly, after Martin’s death, when some other writer inevitably tasked to finish it. I suspect at this point he has some sort of fear driven writer’s block preventing him from finishing, or even working on, the book. He knows he has to produce something better than the ending of the tv show, and while that shouldn’t be hard, it’s still pressure, and it’s probably shut his brain down when it comes to writing this story. He and Stephen King are such interesting opposites when it comes to writing.
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I have to wonder how many writers who don’t get deals because of the same problem put a picture of Martin on their dartboards. 
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The airlines are responsible for baggage handling. But it’s a bit more involved where I used to work.
The airport’s baggage handling equipment is provided by the airport via a contract with a provider who also handles maintenance of that equipment. It’s pretty specialized equipment and there are few providers.
There is also a consortium of the airlines - I think they coordinate the baggage handling. But I may be misremembering and it’s just for other services in the terminal. Not additionally the baggage handling.
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My brother is an author and has a theory that he has so many threads open he has them all tangled in his head and can’t figure out how to bring it in for a landing. Also his theory on why the series ending sucked so much.
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I can’t find it, but I remember reading years ago that he had an assistant, or maybe a hardcore fan, or maybe even several people, who helped him keep track of continuity for the Song of Ice and Fire series. And I think it’s pretty widely understood that the final two seasons of the tv series were written from just a general outline of where Martin told the showrunners the plot was headed. That’s why it feels so rushed, generic, and lacking in substance.
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Or, he’s secretly convinced that he will drop dead the minute he’s finished it.
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Or he’s just bored, or can’t be arsed or is convinced he needs to be touched by the muse before he sharpens his pencil ( or turns on the keyboard or whatever), or he’s got so much money he can spend his time elsewhere without really giving a fuck about his readers.
