Southwest Airlines and Inappropriate Clothing

Apparently Southwest Airlines felt the need to harass a 23 year old female flier about her clothing, which reasonable people on review did not in fact find "lewd, obscene, or patently offensive", as reported in this column.

This is another example of excessive (and discriminatory) organizational paternalism -- and that's paternalism of the pejorative sense, not in the sense of the wisdom you may have enjoyed from your own parental units.

This relates to the Thumper principle: if you don't have anything kind to say, don't say anything at all. It is not an airline's, or an airline's customer service representative's, place to dispense fashion advice, or to create a problem where none need exist.

You might wonder: what *wasn't* that CSR attending to while he was engaged in harassing this passenger? Not too long ago I was at Phoenix Sky Harbor and had the opportunity to assist someone distressed on the brink of tears because she couldn't *find* the Southwest ticketing area. (As one would expect, it was a Midwest ticket agent who eventually helped her recover her composure and find her way.) Addressing these minor but real issues seems a better use of CSR time.

"We don't feel like our employee was in the wrong," Chris Mainz, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines, told FOXNews.com

Then the error in judgment of a few employees is an error in judgment of an entire organization.

Would you like to fly on an airline that attends to real air travel safety issues, or would you like to fly on an airline that harasses its passengers?