Flight attendants represent nice and kind service manners which bring nothing but positive images to the customers’ minds. However a recent study revealed that such attitudes trigger an imperial attitude from the customers, giving them a false impression that they can abuse their given authority.

“The Korean airlines unnecessarily overemphasize kind service manners so much that sometimes the flight attendants end up acting in an overly obedient way. It leads many middle-aged men to treat them as their own secretaries,” said Min Dong-won, an assistant professor of Business Administration in Dankook University who conducted a study titled, “Is power powerful? Power, confidence and goal pursuit.”

Min discusses the effects of yielding attitudes of people in low status on those in superior positions and how they cognitively process the message conveyed from this kind of behavior.

According to the professor, the “customer is king” mindset induces the passenger to feel superior and powerful enough to demand ridiculous favors and act as if they deserve it. However, this kind of mindset does no good to the company , nor does it heighten the consumers’ satisfaction level. The low position at which the stewardess are put makes the customer behave in “an absurd and obstinate way,” said Gordon Bethune, a former chief executive of Continental Airlines, one of the leading flight companies in the U.S.

Flight attendants tend to think that friction with the customer means a flaw in their service quality, which is why they do not go against their customers’ demands.

Min said he experienced a situation in which a stewardess got on her knees to apologize about cookie crumbs left on the passengers’ seat -- an unnecessarily low-position attitude that provokes emotional response from customers. He emphasized that “such an emotional approach to a certain problem is highly unadvisable.”

South Koreans have recently witnessed a controversy involving a Korean executive who allegedly physically abused a flight attendant over the taste of his instant noodles and was eventually dismissed from his post.

Jin Eun-soo, Intern reporter
(janna924@heraldcorp.com)