| Table of Contents Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth Part 3 Page 1 – The Head of Cabin Crew Page 2 – Employing a Sociopath Page 3 – The Day Life Changed Page 4 – Shalom Tel Aviv Page 5 – Post Flight Customer Feedback Page 6 – Cue Second Disciplinary Page 7 – Outcome of the Grievance Page 8 – Yee Haw The Last Page! Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth Part 5 |
Cue Second Disciplinary
Seventeen days after receiving a private message from the CEO regarding a comment I posted in a private chat room on Workplace I received a call from Cabin Crew Manager Fred.
The press flight to Tel Aviv I was rostered to work on was leaving the following day. He called me at 13:30, less than 24 hours before I was due to check-in.
The following screenshot comes from an email I received from him after we spoke.
During the conversation he told me the Head of Department had requested the matter be dealt with as a grievance and if upheld, I’d receive a final written warning.
Earlier that morning I had received a call from someone in the Press Office. The lady said she’d been told by the Crewing department I was the operating Flight Manager and wanted to give me some information about the flight. I therefore know that at 10am that morning I was still part of the crew.
I believe at some point that morning the CEO looked at the list of operating crew and having seen my name, decided for whatever reason he didn’t want me on the flight. He therefore reported my tongue-in-cheek comment from almost three weeks earlier.
Instead of passing the complaint to another Senior Manager to deal with to avoid any conflict of interest, the Head of Department dealt with it herself. At this point in time she was fully aware that she was meeting with me in a couple of weeks to hear my appeal against the outcome of the grievance raised against me by Bart.
That matter was also being dealt with as a final written warning. She would have been fully aware that with two final written warnings I could be fired.
With regards to my use of the word “bloody”, I’m not someone who swears often but “bloody” is a word I have always used quite freely. I don’t consider it to be swearing probably because of how I use it. For me it adds humour to something I’m saying.
How I use it and how someone else reads or perceives it can understandably be very different. Especially if they don’t know me. I sometimes forget we now live in a society today where everyone is so easily offended.
During the disciplinary meeting (not the initial investigation that was carried out by Fred) I was questioned extensively about my use of the word bloody. This line of questioning was absurd. This was a small private group with less than fifty members all of whom were long serving managers in the company. With the exception of the Chief People Officer and CEO I knew everyone and everyone knew me.
This was a tongue-in-cheek comment and a poor attempt at humour that had gone horribly wrong.
I’m in my mid 50’s and had been with the airline for thirty years. I was now being questioned about my use of the word “bloody”. Would it have made any difference had I said “jews are such a fussy lot”? Was it the “bloody” that caused offence or the fact I was saying Jews are fussy?
It’s really important to keep this in context. This was an attempt at humour, I wasn’t making a profound statement. It also wasn’t posted to the wider crew community where the comment may have been screenshot and shared elsewhere.
Every person who was in the group was on the Tel Aviv “core crew” because they had volunteered for it. We all had a genuine interest in making the route a success.
Take a look at the following screenshots;
What troubles me most about this situation is the CEO didn’t report the incident straight away. Having told him I was Jewish and apologised for any offence I may have caused, I believed the matter was closed.
Seventeen days later having become aware we were on the same flight, he then reported me.
I’m fairly certain had he still been upset with my comment even after my apology, he would have reported me immediately or at least within a few days. Afterall he found time to contact I.T to ask them to remove the post. Why didn’t he copy in the Head of Department or ask someone to contact her on his behalf?
Maybe he felt embarrassed for having addressed something that was clearly a tongue-in-cheek comment/banter only to then discover I was Jewish.
Many communities poke fun at themselves, it’s not done to cause offence or to embarrass anyone.
I think he may also have realised I was the Flight Manager who took out the first Tel Aviv flight. A flight that was a huge success, that received outstanding customer feedback and a great review from a blogger that he or his office had asked me to look after.
As onboard managers we were repeatedly told issues should be “nipped in the bud”. I don’t think seventeen days can be regarded as nipping something in the bud especially from the CEO of a company.
The following screenshot is one of the company’s brand values.
This screenshot comes from the company’s website. The CEO was being interviewed regarding the impact of Covid-19 on the business.
Effective two way communication? When I apologised and wished him happy New Year in Hebrew he didn’t even respond!
I had bent over backwards to help make this new route a success despite having spent almost a year dealing with a malicious grievance that I was still fighting.
I can honestly say that for all the years I worked for this company, I tried to uphold their brand values and represent them to the highest standard. These are not brand values specific to any particular company, they’re brand values of being a decent and upstanding human being.
I’ve always been loyal, pragmatic and tried to set an example for others to follow. I demonstrated empathy, integrity and maintained the highest level of respect for those with whom I worked. I’m far from perfect, but when I make a mistake, I admit it and try to learn from it.
This series of emails lead me to believe the CEO did not report my post any earlier than the day before the press flight;
This photo was taken as I left home for the grievance meeting with Cabin Crew Manager Fred and the appeal meeting later that day with the Head of Department.
Poor mental health isn’t visible. It may encourage more of a “weathered” appearance than you’d like but other than that nobody would have any idea what someone is dealing with.
This is the face of someone who almost gave up on more than one occasion. Despite talking openly to several managers in a company I’d worked for my entire adult life, it made no difference.
People say talk to someone, reach out and ask for help. It’s what I did but it fell on deaf ears.
Let’s not forget when I told my own manager that I really wasn’t in a great place at the moment and didn’t know when I’d be well enough to return to work, he asked when I’d be able to attend the grievance meeting for the complaint raised by the CEO.
As someone who was in a very dark place and feeling incredibly self-destructive that really wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
If it was me talking to one of my team in this situation I would have said something along the lines of;
“It’s important to address any performance issues but I want to make sure we approach this with compassion and understanding given your current situation.”
Or;
“I understand that you’re going through a tough time and want to support you. Let’s talk about how we can work together to address any concerns and move forward”.
Or even;
“I want to ensure that we address any performance issues but also want to make sure we’re taking your mental health into consideration. How can I support you at this time?”
Instead what he actually said was; “This matter is not going to go away and although I can push the meeting back it still has to be dealt with.”
This Cabin Crew Manager was a similar age to me and had been in the company for a similar amount of time. He’d been in this position for many years.
I have the Head of Department to thank for having him as my new manager. During my appeal meeting with her she said she had chosen him very carefully (after my original manager moved to a different base) because she wanted someone who could give me all the support I needed.
Based on evidence I have presented so far, I believe it’s evident that one individual within this company was determined to uphold the complaint made against me by a habitual liar and his sociopathic fiancée.
With regards to the second grievance that was brought to her attention, she went to extraordinary lengths to ensure this matter was dealt with as a grievance when it could have been dealt with in a far more compassionate manner.
According to company policy manuals the comment I made on Workplace should not have been dealt with as a disciplinary at all.
Looking back at this situation what I find strange is that when I had my appeal meeting with the Head of Department, it didn’t occur to me that just two weeks earlier she had asked for the complaint from the CEO to be dealt with as final written warning. It was because of her that I was dealing with a second disciplinary.
During that meeting with her she asked me how the meeting with Crew Manager Fred that morning had gone. She was friendly and even offered me condolences for the loss of my dad. It was all a charade.
The meeting with Fred that took place before the appeal meeting seemed to go well. It was a world away from the investigative meeting that had taken place in March with Crew Manager Lana and Employee Relations Consultant Pedro.
I left that meeting feeling completely worthless and as though my nineteen years as an onboard manager counted for nothing. Sadly I later discovered that was the case.
The meeting with Cabin Crew Manager Fred lasted for about an hour during which time I answered all of his questions. I explained that what I wrote was a poor choice of words, that the CEO had taken the comment the wrong way and no malice was ever intended. I also said I would no longer be using the company’s communications platform Workplace and had closed my account.
The meeting ended with us speaking about Israel. I told Fred it was a wonderful country steeped in history and he really must go.
He was friendly, appeared to accept my apology and as I left the room I believed that was the end of it. The Union rep’ agreed the meeting seemed to go well.
Nine days later I received the following email;
Elizabeth was the Employee Relations Consultant who took minutes during the meeting.
If I didn’t make myself available for the meeting the next day I would have to wait eleven days to see what this was about.
During the telephone meeting that took place the following day Fred said after reading my post, CEO Jack had contacted I.T to ask them to delete it. It was then deleted by them a short while later. Therefore I could not have deleted it myself.
I told Fred I couldn’t explain that. This discussion went on for some time. He kept telling me the post had been deleted by I.T not by me.
He was accusing me of lying.
Even in this modern age of technology things can and do go wrong. Of course it’s possible that although I believed I had deleted the post it didn’t delete for whatever reason. I usually accessed Workplace on my PC or laptop but had deleted the post on my phone which is an old iPhone.
This line of questioning had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the post or the reason for the complaint from the CEO.
Almost nothing of what I said during the first grievance raised by Bart had been believed and I was now facing the same situation again.
It should be remembered soon after CEO Jack messaged me I apologised and told him I would delete the post. Not being able to find it I then remembered I had already deleted it, or thought I had. The reason I couldn’t find the post was because it had already been deleted by I.T at the request of the Jack.
Fred then started asking me why I didn’t remember what I’d written when Jack initially asked me about the post. This was madness, we’d already had a meeting where I’d been questioned thoroughly about my choice of words. The focus of attention had now changed and I was being interrogated about my claim that I’d deleted the post shortly after submitting it.
Jack contacted me out of the blue almost a week after the comment was posted. Did Fred really think I had nothing more important on my mind than remembering a post I’d made a week earlier?
Fred then said if he had been asked about something that took place “last year” some things he would remember straight away. He continued, if someone said you posted something that was deemed to be offensive, he felt he would recall that.
He then said when asking someone else this question, if they believed they had deleted the post he would expect an answer along the lines of “I thought I deleted it, I’m so sorry”.
Here’s my response to Jack when he asked me to delete the post because he felt it was “totally inappropriate”, not offensive. Is inappropriate the same as offensive? I’m not sure.
The following screenshot comes from minutes taken during the second telephone grievance meeting with Fred. This text is what he was saying to me.
The focus of this investigation had shifted. I had taken full responsibility for what I had said and repeatedly apologised but it wasn’t enough. Fred wanted to prove I was lying.
I was furious towards the end of the call and was not able to conceal my anger.
The following screenshot comes from an email I sent to him a couple of days later;
This screenshot is from an email that was sent to I.T by Employee Relations Consultant Elizabeth. It shows just how determined they were to prove I was lying.
Whether I was lying or not had nothing to do with investigation into the complaint made by Jack.
I.T said they deleted the post at approximately 17:02. That’s a few hours before I replied to Jack. My initial reply was sent at 20.00. That’s the reason I was unable to find the post.
Elizabeth then asked who had viewed it and when. It was of no relevance. There were 48 people in the group. What difference if one saw it or everyone? Only one complaint had been received and that came from one of only two people who didn’t know me.
During the disciplinary hearing I said I would like to know who “liked” the post. I had been told two people had liked it. I was subsequently told it wasn’t possible to find that out.
Prior to messaging me Jack made no attempt to find out anything about me. Had he spoken to one of the managers from the office who were part of the group, I’m certain they would have put the comment into perspective.
I believe Jack’s personal situation was influencing the way he was reacting. As such he wasn’t dealing with it in an impartial and professional manner.
This is someone who talks about the importance of two-way communication and his love of people. Were he not to be Jewish with close ties to Israel I’m fairly certain nothing would have come of this.
The fact I believed I had deleted the post but for whatever reason it didn’t delete was now being used to accuse me of lying.
It was exactly the same with the first grievance. Despite proving Bart’s entire complaint was based on lies, the Head of Department was so determined for it to be upheld she wouldn’t even believe the opinion of a doctor of clinical psychology.
Take a look at the next two emails. This first is from Elizabeth the Employee Relations Consultant. The second is the response from I.T.
I am of the belief that Fred wanted this grievance to be upheld just like the previous two Cabin Crew Managers wanted the allegations of bullying, harassment and inappropriate touching to be upheld.
I.T could not confirm whether I “attempted to delete the post”. Therefore as stupid as it may sound maybe I was telling the truth.
Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth 