A colleague recently took a late night flight across the country. He sat between a little old lady who barely spoke English and that little old lady’s little old mother, who spoke no English at all. The lady paid for a two-dollar headset with a ten-dollar bill. The flight attendant said she would return with change. Much later, the lady wished to purchase two five-dollar meals from another attendant, and held out a twenty-dollar bill. For a ten-dollar purchase, there was no change for a twenty-dollar bill. The flight attendant seemed paralyzed after the lady explained another attendant already owed her eight dollars. The headset attendant, who was nearby selling beverages, confirmed this, telling the traveler that if she had two dollars she could have the meals. The increasingly confused lady again held out her twenty-dollar bill. The flight attendants froze. 

By this point, my colleague had had enough and reached into his pocket. “I’ll kick in the two dollars. Just give the ladies their food.” The flight attendants hesitated, looking at each other. It was clear they wanted to do the right thing, but feared repercussions. He felt they should just comp the ladies their meals, but told me they looked like women who had been reprimanded in the past for helping customers.

For years the airlines have been running retail businesses during their flights, but without the simple courtesy of ensuring change is available for customers. Apparently, that situation was not inconvenient enough. This airline segments the purchase of headsets, meals and beverages into distinct categories under the control of specific flight attendants, assuring that weaknesses in the system affect more people.

The ladies got their food, and the headset/beverage attendant gave my friend a couple of free drinks, increasing the irony of the situation. As in too many organizations, it appears that the front line coworkers have been granted little discretion to prevent problems, but some power to resolve them. A generous customer satisfaction policy makes sense, but in such cases practice does not make perfect; it just means you get very good at fixing the wrong problems. This reactive half-empowerment sucks the initiative out of otherwise smart, inventive, and caring coworkers.

I imagine that the airline’s CEO does not sit in 38D on the economy flight and thus has little appreciation of the pressures facing his coworkers and customers. Some of his middle managers probably designed a model process for managing in-flight transactions, failing to consider that human beings might be involved in the transactions. In other words, one of those common business practices that only a committee could love – or conceive.

I believe the purpose of management is to remove obstacles; so one purpose of leadership is to prevent, destroy or circumvent the obstacles created by mediocre or incompetent managers. Remember that management is a job title, but leaders can emerge anywhere in an organization. Leadership isn’t about power and bravado; it’s a passion for quality that burns in the soul. Frontline coworkers in any organization have a duty to speak truth to power, for the good of the customer, the company, and society. If company policy inhibits your natural impulse to be kind and generous to two little old ladies who don’t speak your language, you need to speak up and change that company policy - or you need to change companies. Otherwise, the damage a job like that does to your psyche will hamper the rest of your career and rob the rest of us of your best efforts.