Faith In United

“Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right” .Peter F. Drucker

Years of pent up anger against the airlines was released when a passenger was dragged off a flight. It wasn’t pretty. Everyone is mad at the airlines about something. There are fees upon fees upon fees. Boarding is a mess.There are many airline and TSA personnel that act like they are having a bad day and taking it out on you for no reason. There are  weird overhead bin policies and very overcrowded planes. There are no handicapped bathrooms. It feels like  airline company decisions were made for profit only. No one seemed to care about their customers. They changed the rules to suit themselves and airline travel feels a lot harder than it used to be.

 I lost my iPod and expensive Bose noise cancelling headphones on my recent return flights from Iceland. I didn’t bother to be on hold for an hour to try and track it down because I didn’t know where it could be. I just assumed that someone would take it. 

 Today almost a month later, I received a phone call from Julie at United Airlines Lost and Found asking if I lost something. I hadn’t flown back on United and was about to say no but instead I said “Wait, did you find my iPod? And my headphones?”  She said “Yes.” “But I didn’t fly on United Airlines. How did you find me?” “Your name was in your iPod (not locked). We emailed you twice. (I get a lot of airline email). And you have a frequent flier number so we found your phone number.”

 I wonder how many hands this IPod passed through to get to Julie. Was it a United Airlines person that picked it up in the airport when I was changing planes? Did someone from Icelandair hand it to another person in San Francisco? I asked what I could do and she said, “Just tell people you had a good  experience with United Airlines.”

We want the airlines to be better. We want their employees to smile and be helpful. I try to live my life with the idea that karma is real. Why is it so remarkable to me that I got my iPod back from a different airline and that someone went out of their way to find the owner? I wonder how many people did the right thing here. It looks to me like both people and United Airlines are trying to be better and I should have some faith in the world and also give United another chance..  

Fly safe,

JAZ