Fascinating list, thanks. No plum smugglers!!
It seems clear that the pool use is recreational, and nobody will be having swimming lessons or swimming laps, because both males and females are required to use inappropriate clothing for swimming.
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The rationale just doesn’t make sense! If the sight of a pass rider in leggings can bother other passengers, why shouldn’t a normal passenger in leggings bother other passengers?
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Oh, I doubt that executive perks are in danger here. As far as I can tell we are talking about employee perks, not management. I have little doubt they are the vastly different.
I can only speak for my experience with a different airline (Air Canada), but that was a case where people who didn’t play by the (arbitrary, obsolete and valueless) rules ruined it for everyone else. They certainly ruined it for me.
To be specific, people who had been given passes broke the rules on various occasions, and some even complained when they didn’t get seats (passes are usually standby). About 15 years ago the airline changed the policy from: ‘Employees can give the passes to whomever they please’ to ‘Employees can give a pass to someone they travel with’.
In my case the number of places I want to travel in the world only slightly overlaps with the number of places I want to travel with my mother in law (the provider of passes). No big deal, but it was a direct policy change from before rooted in exactly this kind of event. Thousands of employees had their perk restricted because of the behaviour of a few people who weren’t even employees.
So I have little doubt that the airline, if it sees its provision of passes as a source of PR problems rather than a benefit to the company, will restrict passes in the future.
Maybe, but you are ascribing thoughtful, rational responses to an airline corporation facing a PR mess resulting from a free perk they provide to their employees (which is likely not enshrined in any contracts).
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Can people please quit referring to these “perks” as if they are given out of the boundless generosity of the airlines out of the blue, and the employee should be groveling in appreciation at their good fortune?
In reality, they are listed as benefits of employment, and are used along with salary, 401K and other inducements to compete for employees. They are expected and implicitly if not explicitly promised as part of accepting a job.
I suppose United can put all the restrictions they want legally, but if I worked for them, dictating what I (or those I gave the ticket to) can wear when traveling on my personal time simply because they gave me what they promised when I took the job would annoy me about as much as if they tried to tell me what accepted venues I could spend my “perk” of monetary compensation on.
This is from the “Benefits” page at United.com for those considering employment, listed along with such other “perks” as their health insurance, 401K and time off policies.
Travel
Employees and their families enjoy exciting travel privileges, including discounted rates on airline tickets and unlimited standby travel to anywhere United flies. Whether it’s backpacking through Europe or a long weekend in Guam, who wouldn’t enjoy the perks of travel?
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Perhaps people could both quit referring to the company giving an employee what they promised when the employee took the job as “perks,” and also quit referring to employees not doing what they promised when they took the job as “oppression.”
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First use of “oppression” in this thread is by you.
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Perhaps the pass riders should have to wear special distinguishing badges.
I have to say that when, as a child, I accompanied my grandfather on the railway first class I was expected to wear school uniform (because you did in those days) and he would be in full kit - three piece suit. But then he was checking up on his domain, it wasn’t exactly a social trip. In those days on a Saturday you would see school children in uniform in places like Hamleys (the toy shop in Regent Street) and perhaps now and then someone would murmur “how’s the old school these days?”, and you would return a polite reply. It was in some ways a very safe world, in others much more dangerous than today (four times as likely to die in a road accident.)
As another example of this, a former colleague (ex-army and distinctly upper class) was once criticised by a colleague because he was wearing a brown suit to a board meeting to which he replied “But we’re not in London, you only wear grey suits outside London to weddings or funerals.”
I’m just engaging in this bit of nostalgia to say that I wouldn’t have it back again for anything and things are generally much better now. United Airlines does, as someone above notes, seem to be still playing at some kind of quasi-military game. They may have the legal right to do this, but the only real purpose of a uniform on an airline is to let passengers and ground staff know who are the responsible people. And the relatives of people travelling on free passes are not going suddenly to take over from the cabin crew in an emergency.
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OH that reminds me, my doctor friend pretty much wears leggins every single day. At least she did when she had her own practice. She now works ERs, but I don’t think she wears anything different than she did.
I don’t think the issue is that there is a dress standard. I mean I think most of us can think of inappropriate attire or lack there of that would be their limit on what is appropriate, even if for no other reason than health reasons.
I think the issue is that this standard includes something as ubiquitous as leggings, which run the gamut of fun and casual, to business casual. Another issue is that the standard isn’t really equal, as men don’t wear leggings except at Ren Fairs.
While I am a proponent to degree of “their business, their rules”, that doesn’t mean one has to agree with those rules, nor voice their opinion it should change. I imagine at your job there is some rule or process you disagree with. Do you just shut up, or voice your concern? Sure we all have to live with policies we don’t like, but really bad, unfair, or illogical ones should be confronted and changed.
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Yep. I see a heck of a lot more of the former than the latter. Complaints that the policy is archaic or unfair, sure. Ridicule, definitely. “Oppression”? Not so much.
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Oh for the love of monkeys, I am re-engaging.
If I sign an employment contract, it applies to me. There isn’t a transitive property that puts that responsibility on someone else, who didn’t sign that contract. Especially, and I want to be clear, especially minors.
Simply charge people a buck who use a buddy pass, and treat them as passengers. Problem solved.
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Fashion and gender are cultural products. Normative expressions of acceptability are drawn from the dominant culture, which in our case is certainly sexist, so dress codes are inherently sexist. As for that second bit- this resembles the logic taken by victim-blaming… “Of course, if she hadn’t been dressed so revealingly…”
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I take it you haven’t been to Portland lately…
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No, never further west than Arizona.
And in my defense, I am not exactly “up” on fashion. So if there are men’s leggings, I am not young or hip enough to know about/pull them off.
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That is a bit absurd, J. It’s not like these girls just wandered in off the street. They took advantage of an employee benefit, without complying with the benefit’s governing policy. The policy covers the passholders. The girls were flying on the pass, and thus covered by the policy.
I understand that people like to get all up on the warpath bout stuff, but there’s a lot of misrepresentation in this story.
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Let’s agree to disagree. I don’t see eye to eye with you on this incident, but I also don’t want to be rude or waste your time.
I think we both agree that all parties could have handled this better, and leave it at that?
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A good lot of the kids out here are in open revolt against gendered fashion norms. Men wear dresses and makeup, women wear carhartts, steel toes, etc. etc… Because the baseline culture is so tweaked out to begin with, no one notices much, or at least doesn’t care enough to say anything. A teenage boy in a dress on the bus is far less startling to most than, say, the people wandering downtown in bright pink thongs.
Or this guy.
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Whether they’re pass riders or regular passengers, whether they wear badges or not, their skin-tight garments can be seen by everyone on the plane except blind passengers. Those hired mouthpieces need to come up with better rationales - you know, credible rationales.
A PR mess which could be resolved a couple of different ways:
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Eliminate or further restrict the pass program. Enjoy the warm PR feelings when annoyed employees kick up the PR mess a notch on Twitter.
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Fix the lame-o and valueless dress code.
Someone will eventually make a decision. Why not the thoughtful, rational one? How useful has that dress code actually been?
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It’s not about distracting. It’s about United filling their free seats with Eddie Bauer models, and not anyone else, at their own discretion.
Are your suits without layers, pockets, or ruffles? I’m amazed they go down well in business settings if they’re indistingushable from leggings. Wear leggings instead of pants to your next high level meeting and see how that goes. Indistinguishable, after all.
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enormous, you say? about gender, you say? An elephant? hmmmm.
wink wink nudge nudge say no more!
