My immediate reaction to the story of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who colorfully took his job and shoved it earlier this week, was, “Thank God my car didn’t need to be serviced.”
That’s because the only times I’m ever forced to watch the insufferable morning “news” shows like Today and Good Morning America is when I’m sitting in the waiting room of the Subaru dealership, subject to the tyranny of the blaring TV set. Those are perhaps the only times in my life when I wish to God I had an iPod, that I might set the volume on “deafening” and bury my head in the newspaper rather than be forced to hear Ann Curry ask a grieving widow “how it felt” to discover her husband had been consumed by a cannibalistic serial killer, or to listen in as the studio gang trades yuks over that viral video of the chimp riding the unicycle.
I have no problem with Slater losing his cool with obnoxious passengers and sliding down the escape chute to whatever the next chapter in his life might hold. I can see where being a flight attendant could suck in a major way, and how a blow to the noggin from an overhead bin could constitute the last straw. I wish the guy no ill. There’s something to be said for exiting with style and not a loaded gun. I’d rather disgruntled employees go flighty than go postal.
But I also wish I didn’t live in a world in which, per one newspaper story I read, “By 7 pm Tuesday more than 50,000 people declared themselves supporters of Mr Slater on a page on Facebook dedicated to him.” A world in which there already is talk of getting the guy a reality show. A world in which, needless to say, I would have found Steven Slater quite inescapable had I been sitting miserably at the Subaru dealership any day this week.
What the world needs now—in addition to love, sweet love—is more water coolers, less social networking, and no infotainment TV. Years ago, we might have read about Steven Slater’s blowup in the newspaper, commented on it at work the next morning, then forgotten about it. How, sweet Jesus, I miss those days.
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