United CEO apologizes after video of O'Hare passenger dragged from flight goes viral

[Hortensis]

65. Trump territory.

Seriously, authoritarian wishfulness all over this--a collision between the authoritarian contemptuousness for those who presumably can be pushed around that's having its day in business with the old "the customer's always right" (for good reason). When I first went to work, the mantra was that customers are hard to get and easy to lose. Ignore that and you wouldn't have your job long. No matter the good reasons behind it, that has been set aside in favor of contemptuous abuse.

And it's the same for good employees. I sub some remote editing to a company--and an industry--that created huge problems for itself by regarding its highly skilled employees as slugs that could be switched out for housewives hoping to pick up a little extra fun money, every technical change a pretend excuse to drop remuneration and every possible excuse used to severely penalize normal errors and withhold money earned. That contempt practically stamped on every email--bottom line, take the abuse or leave. At first many of the best of course chose to leave the field, then many, who for often important reasons hoped to hang in until retirement, HAD to leave. It got so bad any kid with a year's general office experience could make as much or more. Now the pendulum's grudgingly, of necessity, swinging the other way, but they still don't pay people with the necessary talents enough to train to enter the field. (The classic economic determinant for setting wages.)

Watching this company's, and other authoritarian companies', stupid, self-destructive policies, I've come to believe authoritarians are incompetent to run a business profitably, much less a nation for the benefits of its people. This company actually hired an entire second tier of editors whose job was to review everything the first tier did (so many good people gone) and tried to split a decent remuneration to pay both less than they could make as sales clerks. That collapsed, of course.

Done ranting, but I never weigh in on industry boards.