| Table of Contents Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth Part 6 Page 1 – A Royal Commendation Page 1 – Lana’s Investigation Continued Page 2 – More from Lana’s Investigation Page 3 – Yet More from Lana’s Investigation Page 4 – Almost Finished but not Quite Page 5 – That’s It for This Chapter Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth Part 8 |
Yet More from Lana’s Investigation
The Crew Performance Management data Lana refers to is the performance review completed on Bart by Katrina. She scored him 10/10 for both sectors.
Of course it was an error the customer was missed out during breakfast. A crew member would never miss someone out on purpose. Lana says it’s impossible to have attributed the error to Bart when there were other operating crew too.
The customer was sitting on the side of the aircraft Bart was responsible for serving throughout the flight.
When the customer complained to me about not being served he said Bart had woken him up for breakfast, converted his bed but didn’t go back to serve him.
In his statement Bart claimed Katrina and Claire had been helping him on his aisle which is why the customer was missed. Claire says nothing about that in her witness statement and was busy serving her own customers.
On the aircraft we were working on three crew work in the aisles in First Class. Each one is responsible for serving all customers on their side (left, middle or right). Should one crew member finish before another they will help elsewhere in the cabin.
What Bart says is just another of his many lies but ironically it’s actually the truth. He didn’t ask Katrina for help but should have because he wasn’t able to cope with all his customers wanting breakfast. Yet this is someone who wanted to work up as Purser!
The way he did the service meant he had seventeen people suddenly all waiting to be served. That’s exactly why we wake a couple of people up at a time, serve them breakfast and then move on to the next two. Doing the service in this way prevents that from happening.
When I saw Bart was so far behind Lottie and Claire, I asked Katrina to help him. That meant she was taken away from what she was supposed to be doing. I have to do breakfast in Premium so am not able to help with the service in First Class.
A crew member would never ask the Purser to help them with breakfast because everyone on their side was eating. If you do the service as it’s supposed to be done it works perfectly well.
When I asked Bart what went wrong he couldn’t explain what happened. I wasn’t blaming him, I was trying to establish the facts so I could speak with the passenger and document the incident for Customer Relations.
I would at least have expected him to apologise to the customer but he never did. I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to ask him to apologise.
When the customer returned to his seat Katrina went to speak with him. They chatted for quite some time.
Most if not all of Bart’s lies would have been exposed had one of the managers involved in this grievance matter spoken to Katrina, Claire and Lottie.
When I spoke with Bart about what happened Katrina was present. She told me she had only served the back three rows (16, 15 and 14K). When I asked her to help him serve breakfast I said start at the back of First and work forwards. This customer was in 8K.
Despite all of this evidence Lana still says it’s impossible to attribute the error to Bart. Lottie’s statement was very detailed and said nothing about her helping him with the service at any time. She does say that she was working in the opposite aisle.
Lana goes on to say I should have addressed this matter with him and it should have been “positioned” as a conversation. Like the conversation I had with him in the presence of Katrina to ask if he knew why the customer had been missed out? The conversation in which I then explained to Bart how the service should be done correctly.
Specific details regarding the incident were documented on my iPad for the attention of Customer Relations.
Regarding her assessment of the touching allegation, Lana states in the meeting with Bart he explained I touched him below his back from behind with my hands (I couldn’t have done it with my feet) when I wanted to move him over. I didn’t use any words and didn’t say anything (is that not the same?). It made him feel uncomfortable.
Bart should not be working in an environment where you constantly have to move colleagues out the way to get get by.
The following screenshot comes from minutes taken during his meeting with Lana.
This “fairly confident individual” (as stated in his complaint) and ex police officer of eight years didn’t feel able to ask me not to touch his hips. He also didn’t feel able to ask me not to touch his fiancee’s hips!
Having been asked in witness statements about my physical touching the only crew member to mention being touched in this way was Anna. She was working at the opposite end of the aircraft to me.
Lottie, Claire, Katrina, Mia and T were unaware of anyone being touched inappropriately as were the Captain and First Officer.
You would have thought Bart would have mentioned my inappropriate behaviour whilst criticising my ability every time I left the galley, as stated in T’s witness statement.
Katrina, Claire and Lottie were all unaware of how Bart looked and felt despite working alongside him throughout our flight from Atlanta to London. Mia and T were also unaware of it despite working in the same cabin as him during the dinner service. Mia worked with Bart on the same aisle.
Ven stated he did not see or was aware of me touching anyone inappropriately at any time, yet accuses me of squeezing his waist. He worked out of the same galley as me, Bart, Lottie, Katrina and Claire.
According to witness statements not a single crew member except for Anna noticed any unusual behaviour between Bart and I.
Ven states it seemed Laurence would always pick on Bart or pull him up. He also says in his witness statement I did not see any communication between Laurence and Bart at any time.
At the end of her witness statement Katrina invited the company to speak with her should they have any further questions.
Other than requesting witness statements, nobody from the company spoke to her or anyone else on the crew at any time during the investigation.
In Ven’s witness statement he says the First Class service (on the inbound flight) took four hours. I proved he was lying. It took three hours which is already much longer than normal on a night flight.
Our flight time from takeoff to landing was seven hours and thirty minutes. Had the meal service taken four hours, it would not have been possible for the crew to have more than ten minutes in the bunks. They actually had fifty minutes in two shifts. The breakfast service began two hours before landing.
During the flight I took some photos to send to the catering department. We had recently been told you could take photos with the iPad which could be uploaded to the catering report. That made things much easier when reporting problems.
When I transferred the photos to my P.C which I did whilst compiling my defence, I discovered they were timed. Having found out the flight time, the time we took off and landed and knowing the crew had fifty minutes in the bunks in two shifts, I could work out how long the meal service had taken.
In one photo you could see Bruce who was working in the galley in the background tidying up after the service. I could therefore pinpoint fairly accurately what time it finished.
I was photographing the menu because the dessert that had been loaded was different to what it should have been.
Just to the right is a photo I took of Katrina and Claire in the carpark after we landed back home. I’ve masked their faces for privacy but they’re both smiling broadly and waving at the camera.
During the flight we had been speaking about a flight they had done recently with a friend of mine. They said you must tell him we flew together. I said let me take a photo of you both to send to him.
So despite what T, Ven, Bart and Anna say in their statements about me not giving Katrina any support and leaving her to get on with it on her own, we actually got along very well.
Evidence from several witness statements including Katrina’s confirmed I was very supportive and worked as hard as everyone else.
Everyone was saying goodbye to each other as we left the bus in the car park. Despite me saying goodbye to Anna and Bart they both ignored me.
One of Bart’s complaints was that I allegedly said the crew are inexperienced. As you can see, Ven says exactly the same in his witness statement. Yet the Head of Department stated she could find no evidence of collusion.
Contrary to Ven’s lies I would never have said I had inexperienced staff in First Class because that wasn’t true. I would never refer to cabin crew as “staff” and despite Ven’s use of speech marks to quote what I allegedly said, I knew exactly why the service had taken so long.
Bruce who was in the galley had been with the company for several years. Claire had flown with another airline for thirty years so may have been new to the company but wasn’t inexperienced as a crew member.
Katrina was anything but inexperienced but was working in a rank she was unfamiliar with. Lottie was very experienced.
The only inexperienced crew member who I now believe had never worked in that cabin before was Bart. He was the cause of many of the problems and the rest were caused by the chaotic manner in which the galley was being run.
In Lottie’s statement she says I said the service was slow because Katrina and the galley were not organised. The conversation was not quite as straightforward as that. As she confirms in her statement I was encouraging her to go for promotion. I therefore spoke privately to her about why I felt the service had taken so long and been so chaotic.
During that conversation I explained what the role of Purser involved. I said the Purser must lead and direct the service instead of just being an extra pair of hands. Where that doesn’t happen things can potentially go wrong which they did.
Bart, Anna and Mia were the only three crew members out of thirteen crew (including the Captain and First Officer) to have any knowledge of this comment. All three versions of what allegedly took place were different.
Bart says that Anna “witnessed” the comment yet Anna states I made the comment “to her”. She claims I said it when she invited me to join them “for drinks before our Christmas meal“. By that she means the pre-dinner drinks in Tommy’s hotel room with her, Bart, Ven, Mia, Peter, Bruce another crew member plus the two travelling companions. They met in Tommy’s room before coming down to the restaurant.
In Bart’s statement he says the crew member who spoke to Laurence (who was seemingly Anna) asked if I was “coming down for the drinks/food laid on by the hotel”. That refers to the free bar that accompanied the buffet dinner in the hotel restaurant.
OBM – Onboard Manager.
So Bart didn’t have a good rapport with me nor did Anna. Bear in mind she worked at the opposite end of the aircraft to Bart and I in Economy. The flight was less than half full, she’d had two hours in the bunks and I hadn’t really spoken with her for any length of time. Yet out of the blue when she “allegedly” invited me to join her, Bart and other members of the crew for pre-dinner drinks in Tommy’s room I replied “no, I’m going for a tommy tank”. Or as Bart puts it, “I’m going for a tommy tank first”.
You really couldn’t make this rubbish up. It’s utterly pathetic. I’m a man in my 50’s with far more important things to worry about yet this nonsense cost me my job with a company I’d been with for thirty years.
Tommy who was working up as Purser in Economy alongside Anna, Peter, Mia and a crew member who didn’t return her witness statement has a cockney accent. Just a few months later he posted a video on his Instagram page of himself masturbating. It was widely shared around the company.
Full details regarding that incident can be found here.
The “free Christmas drinks” refers to an open bar that was laid on by the hotel whilst we were having dinner in the restaurant.
After we finished eating some of the crew from the other table asked if we wanted to go with them to a karaoke bar. It was about 9:30pm.
The alleged conversation referred to by Bart and Anna took place some seven hours earlier whilst waiting for our room keys after arriving from airport.
I believe Anna told Mia to say that I made the “tommy tank” comment when she allegedly invited me to join them for pre-dinner drinks whilst waiting for our room keys.
Mia wouldn’t have been aware of that conversation because it didn’t take place. She therefore got confused about what she was supposed to say when she wrote her statement. She only remembered something about “drinks.”
That’s what happens when you lie.
Why didn’t Mia just say “we invited Laurence to a Karaoke bar after dinner”. Instead she said we invited him “after our free Christmas drinks”.
The free bar was a temporary unit that had been set up adjacent to the tables we were sitting at for dinner.
More than two hours later after we had all finished eating, some of the crew from the other table invited us to go to the Karaoke bar. By this time with most crew having consumed a considerable amount of alcohol the bar that had been serving the “free drinks” had disappeared.
So it would have been logical for Mia to say “after dinner we invited Laurence to come with us to a karaoke bar”.
This is what the Head of Cabin Crew said in the outcome of her investigation;
I was never alone at any time with Bart, Anna or Mia in the hotel lobby. I was standing with Lottie, Katrina, Claire, Tommy, the Captain and First Officer. Bart, Anna, Mia plus other members of the crew were standing behind us with the two companions.
The following screenshots from witness statements include the only comments that were made regarding the time we were in the restaurant.
This comes from Crew Manager Hayley’s investigation. The black mark covers the name of the company which is the letterhead of the paper.
The three crew members Hayley is referring to are Bart, Anna and Mia. Each one of them told a different version of what allegedly took place.
The Head of Department said Anna and other crew members found the comment offensive. Only Anna said that. Ex police officer Bart said he didn’t feel it was appropriate language for a manager whilst Mia said the comment was unnecessary.
In the following link you can refer back to an earlier chapter where I explain what really happened.
Let me share something else with you.
Anna said she felt uncomfortable with my alleged use of the words tommy tank. The following comes from her Facebook page. It was published whilst the company were looking at who was going to be made redundant in response to Covid-19;
Being Cabin Crew | The Ugly Truth 