SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers • Hacker News Board

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#61

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:20 AM UTC

ghiculescu wrote: post #40

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a customer, I support workers unionizing to improve their wage bargaining power. Besides tipping, I can’t do much to help them do that. They’ve gotta organize to do it, and call on the NLRB when there’s (always inevitably) Corporate Fuckery [1]. Luckily, the NLRB received a $25M funding bump in the latest Omnibus spending bill signed into law. [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/cases-decisions/decisions/administrativ...

How does tipping improve their bargaining power? Seems to me like it would weaken it (“why do you need a higher base wage? You get so many tips!”)

[deleted]

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#62

Post by falcolas » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:20 AM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #50

teej wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a real benefit of public corporations: anyone with significant ownership is public. The names of the owners and executives are trivial to find.

And at that level you get people who absolutely don't care if some Joe Shmoe was unhappy with their service or something.

They also generally have another layer of protection from being contacted by plebs, err, customers.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#63

Post by version_five » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

Eisenstein wrote: post #35

> Southwest Airlines ticketing agents, cashiers at Nando’s Chicken, low-wage call center workers for Verizon overseas, become corporate sin eaters This is why it is a good idea to be nice to the people you deal with on the front lines, and write a very politely worded letter to the head of the department at the company you are dealing with, and potentially letters to their boss, and their boss, etc. Mail it, if possi…

Do you think the executives care about your letter?

Stop going to the place that treats you badly, and if possible write an honest critical review of them. This is not perfect, but it has more hope of getting attention than a letter to an executive who almost certainly won't even see it.

For better or worse, people vote with their wallets. There are lots of low cost versions of things I would never even consider (and any experience would have me running to write an unfavorable review) but there are lots of people who care most about cost. It's the reason why southwest exists in the first place.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#64

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

ghiculescu wrote: post #40

toomuchtodo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a customer, I support workers unionizing to improve their wage bargaining power. Besides tipping, I can’t do much to help them do that. They’ve gotta organize to do it, and call on the NLRB when there’s (always inevitably) Corporate Fuckery [1]. Luckily, the NLRB received a $25M funding bump in the latest Omnibus spending bill signed into law. [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/cases-decisions/decisions/administrativ...

How does tipping improve their bargaining power? Seems to me like it would weaken it (“why do you need a higher base wage? You get so many tips!”)

It doesn't. The tipping is the only thing I can do in the short term to help, because those tips go to workers immediately (versus the lengthy sales cycle of labor improvements). My apologies that wasn't more clear.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#65

Post by woodruffw » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

phpisthebest wrote: post #49

rqtwteye wrote: post #13

It’s the same with the tipping that seems almost everywhere these days. Instead of the workers being paid properly by the company the customer gets guilt tripped to tip and when you don’t tip the worker is angry at the customer, not the company.

The problem here is that workers now want to be "paid properly" (what ever that means) and still get tips. There have been restaurants have tried non-tipping models, consumers and staff both hate it. First the highly productive staff often make less under that model (where poor performers make more), consumers hate it because the menu prices increase, and you end up with McD's level customer service where drinks are…

> The problem here is that workers now want to be "paid properly" (what ever that means) and still get tips.

One sensible metric is that you should be able to support yourself while living in the area you work (or an area nearby such that it isn't a significant financial hardship or timesink to commute to work). Service jobs largely fail on that metric, effectively using government money and family support structures to cover the gap.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#66

Post by jcranmer » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

adriancr wrote: post #14

subradios wrote: post #2

But automated call centers do save the customer time. 9 times out of 10 a user problem is easily remediated by pointing the user to the correct manual. If it wasn't, phone trees and other pre-tech phone routing would never save the company money at all! Customers would buy products with customer service that actually solved their problem instead. Customer service solving the customer problem in the fastest possible t…

I would argue automated call centers are a problem. If you end up needing to call someone since you've exhausted all other avenues you do want to talk to someone. At that point you will either: - waste a lot of time navigating prompts until you give up or reach a human. - automated call center will decide that prompt it gave you is the correct one and close your call... (had this happen a lot...) - automated call cen…

I think this is right on the money. If you assume that most troubleshooting starts with a call to customer service, then automated prompts to do standard troubleshooting isn't a terrible idea. But the call to a customer service is usually the last resort, at which point you need to talk to a human being, and anything that adds friction is only going to aggravate your users.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#67

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:21 AM UTC

kadomony wrote: post #52

lotsofpulp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the customer know whether or not a worker is paid properly? It is none of their business, or responsibility.

If a business is pushing for tips (those dumbass Toast POS consoles that now often start tipping at 20% ), the workers are underpaid. Tipping is getting out of control, and businesses just need to pay more. Tipping is a stupid concept. Japan has the number three economy in the world and they'll refuse tips. Watch https://youtube.com/watch?v=V4sbYy0WdGQ&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE and tell me that he's wrong.

[deleted]

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#68

Post by r00fus » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:23 AM UTC

phreack wrote: post #15

This is why my #1 metric to choose a service provider is support capability. Things will always go wrong and if the point of contact with the customer does not have any agency to fix things effectively, I will not deal at all. The exception is the norm, and front facing employees must be able to act instead of just reading a script and hoping the problem will solve itself. That phrase about recorded apologies is just…

One company that (somewhat recently) improved their support is T-Mobile.

They used to do call centers in the cheapest places but now have agents that are a) local to your time zone and b) are not governed solely by basic metrics but are actual careers with an actual progression ladder.

You’d not think these are intrinsic but it’s turned out to be fantastic in aggregate as a customer.

I have always had a great experience with their support since they updated their process circa 2018.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#69

Post by phpisthebest » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:23 AM UTC

barbazoo wrote: post #48

Eisenstein wrote: post #35

> Southwest Airlines ticketing agents, cashiers at Nando’s Chicken, low-wage call center workers for Verizon overseas, become corporate sin eaters This is why it is a good idea to be nice to the people you deal with on the front lines, and write a very politely worded letter to the head of the department at the company you are dealing with, and potentially letters to their boss, and their boss, etc. Mail it, if possi…

How would you go about finding out how to access the manager of some department within MegaCorp? All one can do these days is fill out some contact form and maybe someday getting an email from some noreply email address. I'm also chuckling at the thought of me mentioning that I'm a stock holder. This feels very detached from reality.

It has been known for awhile that most big companies have Executive Service teams that do respond to customer emails. the Website consumerist (are they even around anymore) used to publish these "ceo" email addresses.

about 20 years when I worked as a 3rd party vendor in a Big Box retailer I had contact with many Regional Managers, they all had public ways to contact them, and those contacts where read, and if a customer complaint was it issue it would be sent to store manager given high priority

Most people think like you do, "they are so big so they don't care" and depending on the reasonableness that may be true, I saw some really crazy things in my time (people always angling for free shit) but honest issues where dealt with.

Re: SouthwestAirlines' Meltdown Shows How Corporations Pit Consumers Against Workers

#70

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:23 AM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #53

lotsofpulp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the customer know whether or not a worker is paid properly? It is none of their business, or responsibility.

If tipping can ever be mandatory on a bill, it’s a good sign the employees are getting screwed.

Any business can add a tip to any bill. There is no reason why the civil engineering firm I hired to do a survey could not give me a quote that says “mandatory x% gratuity on final invoice”.