I follow the Instagram account of a young woman who I was co-workers with years ago. She’s moved on to much better things and has been pursuing her dream of being a flight attendant. In addition to the beautiful pictures she takes during her travels, she also posts pictures of airline patrons in unfavorable poses, situations or conditions.
She posts these images, which sometimes include the individual’s face and tags them with phrases such as #passengershaming #peopleofairports and #lifeofaflightattendant to name a few. She posts these images with the clear intention of shaming people for certain airport antics – I’ll leave you to judge the normalcy or inappropriateness of what is taking place in the pictures.
While she does not post these types of images often (seriously, I’d say it’s 1 in every 50-75 images), it gets me really upset every time she does it. The one she posted most recently is what prompted me to finally speak up and tell her that I thought her posting the image of this passenger and shaming him was unfair.
Here’s The Picture
“This is gross. Why the floor? I get your tired but jeez this was like 40 min before boarding a red eye you couldn’t wait? @sassystewrants #sassystew #skyharbor #phoenix #arizona #airports @passengershaming #passengers #sleepy #flightattendantlife #peopleofairports”
I have blurred out the customer’s face in this image and all images going forward out of respect for their privacy.
This man is laying on the floor, perhaps just relaxing, perhaps snoozing, perhaps intending to try to sleep. For full disclosure, he is about 40 minutes away from boarding a “Red Eye” (that is, an overnight flight).
I won’t argue that perhaps the floor isn’t the most respectful place to be lounging as I fully understand that it’s an airport and there are typically hundreds, if not thousands of chairs. I don’t know how many chairs were available at the time of the picture, but while we’re at it, there are also a lot of other things we don’t know about this situation or this person.
Why this particular image?
What has me most upset is the fact that I understand the need, actual need to get more horizontal and lay my head down. Although this passenger would be comfortably seated and able to recline in an hour or so (because let’s be real – boarding is in 40 minutes, so you know he won’t get to lay down for at least an hour) he may be like myself and have a sleep disorder.
He may need to lay down now in fear of getting violently ill. I know that when I reach that point, I have to lay down and sitting upright in an airport chair doesn’t cut it. I tend to get a migraine and end up hovered over a toilet. No one wants to hear or smell my vomit on an enclosed, overnight flight (or any flight for that matter). Let’s face it, 40+ minutes is a long time to wait.
Here are some other examples:
“It’s nap time on the floor! #passengershaming #unitedairlines #iah #naptime #sleep @passengershaming @sassystewrants”
Okay, so clearly there are chairs she could be sitting in. Again, maybe the floor isn’t the most respectable place to be (I mean, my Mom always taught me it was disrespectful just to sit on a floor in public). But who knows why she’s there? Why is it any of our business? Maybe she’s real fricken tired!?
“Nap time in CLT! #sassystew #sassystewcrew #peopleofairports #clt #passengershaming #crewlife #naptime #charlottedouglas #charlotte #clt”
I don’t understand the “shame” in this. He’s napping. Layovers are typically several hours long, if not more. If you have such a problem with the other 2 passengers because of their nap locations, why is it a problem that this guy is sleeping in a chair?
“Nasty put your shoes on! #passengershaming #feet #flyingfeet #usairways #phl #philly #peopleofairports #flightattendantproblems #lifeofaflightattendant #nasty #stank #sassystew #sassystewcrew”
While I don’t want to see people’s feet (more importantly, don’t want to smell them), she’s wearing slip on open-toe shoes. And who knows how long she’s been walking around in them! Maybe she chose today to mistakenly wear the wrong shoes and is in tons of pain. Again, not our damn business.
So this is a thing…
Apparently there are whole Facebook pages and Instagram accounts dedicated to this sort of thing. I get the need to vent about customers. Let’s be real here – we all do it whether it’s to co-workers, significant others or to our friends. But in public like this? Isn’t this the sort of thing people are often fired from their jobs for doing?
I seem to recall quite a few incidents where employees spoke negatively about employers, customers, and businesses and were promptly dealt with via pink slip.
What’s your opinion?
Do you feel that this Flight Attendant (of all people) has the right to publish images of passengers without permission and shame them for what she often describes as “airport antics”?
Sleeping passengers should NOT be shamed at all. The only time I actually understand shaming customers is when they’re acting like jerks (like, on a plane, putting your feet in someone else’s personal space, or getting naked (which people seem to think is okay?), like I’ve seen on Buzzfeed and Yahoo!), but sleeping?! Let them rest!
Right!? And some of the shames I sort of get… Like I saw some where people had taken off their clothes and stuff. But just simple sleeping in the airport? Leave them alone! Flying is stressful and exhausting.
Oh my goodness this makes me so mad. If I saw this regularly I would straight up report her to the company she worked for (if I knew). In the airport specifically I think there are different sets of rules because, let’s face it, air travel sucks anymore.
My husband and I were once flying back from Arizona and the flight was delayed and it was the last flight of the day so we were stuck. Also, that meant we missed our layover to get home. We got to the airport around 3pm (after driving 4 hours to it from where we had been all week). My husband was so frustrated because he NEEDED to be at work the next morning but it just wasn’t going to happen. The airline offered to put us up in a hotel in Arizona or Atlanta (where our layover was) but he was terrified we would miss our flight. We eventually got to Atlanta (about 4AM) and waited for our 9AM flight. You better believe that we slept on the ground once we got to Atlanta. It was the most miserable end to a trip ever.
And here’s the thing, it freaking happens every day. Maybe flight attendants forget about that because when they’re in the airport they’re working. They get to their plane and do their job, not the same thing as the customer.
I just find this wrong on so many levels. and don’t find anything any of those people are doing particularly horrible.
I didn’t find any of them horrible either. Your story is EXACTLY what I am talking about too… you had to sleep! She has no idea what all that guy has gone through today, how many planes he’s been on or how long his layover was. He might have reached that point where 40 minutes was too long to wait.
Going to the airport is always a nightmare, I don’t blame any of these people a bit! Well, if I were there I might pass a little judgement on the girl sleeping on the floor. She’s in the middle, making it awkward for people to walk around her and is also blocking off the two seats next to her. I’d have set up camp closer to the wall ;)
Yeah, I admit her situation seems iffy. She could have slept closer to the chairs even instead of being in the middle like that. But perhaps there were no one else around to be bothering.
I don’t understand how any of these people are doing anything that deserves shaming! If you are personally offended by people taking a freaking NAP, you’ve got some issues…
I mean really?? This is so awful and rude.
Completely agree.
Seriously, I’m sure some of these people have been travelling all day without a company sponsored hotel room or lounge to rest in. I feel like her company needs to find out about this so they can fire her-especially since she’s tagging the airline brand in the posts-it makes people who see this not want to fly with them in case they get shamed. What a cow.
I hate all of these public shame-y blogs. People of Walmart, etc. They make my skin crawl. This is no exception. And as someone who has napped during a too-long-to-be-easy-but-too-short-to-visit-the-city-for-a-while layover or two, just, wtf?
I think she’s totally out of line for this. What’s the big deal and whose business is it if someone chooses to sleep in an airport. Maybe their flight was cancelled and they’ve been waiting HOURS and just want a frickin nap! Leave them alone!
I briefly followed the “passengershaming” instagram and then became disgusted with it myself. I get why the feet-coming-between-seats pics when it first started were kind of like, “yeah, eww!” but to shame people for sleeping and trying to be comfy? I was on a 11am flight recently where you’d think everyone was well-rested, but that wasn’t the case; the man next to me had just gotten off a red-eye from hawaii (6 hour flight) where he hadn’t slept any and had been waiting for our flight for three hours. He was exhausted, and had 6.5 more hours to go. Why shame that? If there’s nowhere to lay down in the airport (chairs with handrails/who wants someone taking 3 seats anyway?) why not lay down over in a corner on the ground and try to get a couple hours of sleep? If you’re out of the way and not bothering anyone, why is it anyone else’s business?
This is horrible! I fly a lot and see people sleeping all the time and I WISH I was capable of sleeping anywhere like them ha. Leave people alone and get off your high horse. Hope this woman is caught and fired.
What gives anyone the right to shame others like this? I don’t care if they’re snorting cocaine naked at the terminal (the security will come get them, they will suffer for breaking the law, let it be) feeling justified in making other people feel bad just because they disappoint your expectation is immature, self-centered, and actively causing problems in the world. Instead of shaming, why not ignore?? It uses even fewer calories of righteous indignation.
Wow! Wow!….wow…there is NO shame is trying to catch a nap, even on the floor. I feel it is a form of cyber-bullying to “shame” people publicly for doing rather normal things. I can understand if the action was rude, distasteful, or gross but even then, to take someone picture and share it without their permission… I, me and me alone, feel is wrong and an infringement on their privacy. I think this airline photographer is not taking her job professionally and should see a pink slip. We all need to be kinder to one another…there is enough out there to tear us down. Photo shaming is a sad thing in our society and it should stop.
That blog is not owned by the woman who’s pictures prompted this blog post, but it’s definitely one that I was referring to when I spoke of there being blogs and whatnot out there.
I’m just not sure why anyone would put so much energy into publicly mocking other people. That gal needs to find a better hobby!