Quipper, No. 14 "Holiday Edition", December 1982

              NO. 14 DEC. '82
E.T. GOES HOME
HOLIDAY EDITION
The results are in and the E.T. (’’Experienced Team") is out — two-thirds of it, anyway. After all, after experience comes retirement (something the managers of Pan Am's ad campaign ought to keep in mind), so we’re not surprised to see Alice and Susan go. We are looking forward to seeing them down line (if they can finagle their "weigh” hack), hut we’re wondering why Emilia didn’t get the dump as well. Could it have been the confusingly constructed ballot that had Nadale, "Gvozdenovic" and De Geer along the same line? Who designed the ballot? Did she sense the winds of changes shift and hope to drift with the new tide?
Since the "team concept" was so crucial in this election, it only seems fair that Ms. De Geer step down. Clearly a mandate for change has heen put forth by the membership. After all of the bad things the different teams had to say about each other, we doubt that they’ll work well together. We also doubt that this was the membership’s intention: when votes were cast along what appeared to be party lines.
QUIPPER congratulates the winners, consoles the losers, and leaves the question open as to which is which. Clem intends to carry his confrontation journalism to the new administration, and The Editors have already forwarded the revised QUIPPER PLATFORM to Mr. Nadale for perusal and commentary. If he responds, we’ll print our proposals and his comments in an upcoming edition. If he doesn’t... well, we have ways of making him talk (several of The Editors are ex-London base German pursers).
CCP (CHANGE CORPORATE PERCEPTION) #1: MANAGEMENT MEMOS
The company’s CCP (Change Customer Perception) program has been a real failure. Its basic function has been to accuse flight attendants of unprofessional behavior, then offer some ridiculous and uninformed solution to the imagined problem. CCP has been management's way of giving flight service a little slap on the wrist. This tendency toward subtle sadism demonstrates that it is really the Corporation whose perceptions need to be changed. Hence, we are initiating our own CCP program.
CCP #1 deals specifically with the November 23rd memo from Diane Roberts concerning "December Flying," and generally with all memos from management that are written to impress higher-ups rather than to communicate honestly and directly with the persons to whom such memos are actually addressed. Overusing the absurd phrase "impact on," Ms. Roberts takes nine floral paragraphs to say, basically, that management screwed up, tons of flying that someone should have told someone else about remained unnoticed, hence numerous flights will be understaffed in December, and you won’t mind, will you? And just to show you how on top of the situation management is, Ms. Roberts proceeds to request that flight attendants scheduled for December vacations postpone vacation until 1983; she also reminds all of us about our "proven cooperation" in the area of medical groundings, boldly asserting that the rate of groundings won't be "unusually high" this holiday season.
Now, if the Company were really concerned about not wanting to understaff flights during the holiday season, high line would have been eliminated at all bases as of December 1st, and we would have been encouraged to pick up as many trips as possible. Instead, under the guise of keeping the lines of communication open, Ms. Roberts tries to tell flight attendants to be prepared for horrendous in-flight conditions and to be good, while showing Pan Am big-wigs that she’s in control. We don't buy it.