Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity. | | JETBLUE. Once great. Incompetent now. Doesn't five 12 f***s. (Getty Images) | | | | “Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.” |
| |
| rantnrave:// No takes on media today. I am announcing a new column called BRANDS THAT F*** US. The first subject in the next week will be the once mighty JETBLUE. I am still not lucid from an 11-hour delay for my 7 am flight from LAX to JFK. I landed at 1:30 am. I got off the plane at 2:30 am. There was some tough weather in NYC. Many planes were delayed. None of us want to fly unsafely. That was part of the delay. Maybe half the time at most. But JetBlue took that and turned it into a disaster. 12 delays. And they knew from the first delay, even though they announced 12 of them over 11 hours, that we were not taking off for a long time. I heard them talking to each other. But they didn't tell the truth. Gate agents snapping at us. Walking away. Disappearing for hours at a time. Refused to book us on other airlines. Didn't move us onto planes that were leaving. Mine was the first flight. But was not the first flight to take off. Then they boarded us about 7 hours in. Then they deplaned us. Why? Weather? Nope. Ooops. No crew. They knew the crew before were over their hours. But planned nothing. Oh and oops, no food. No end in sight. The incompetence was fascinating. The chaos at the gate worse. The answers non-existent. The ones creating the problem vacant or gone. New ones coming in without the history. The new boarding. No flight plan. Food had gone bad and then needed to refuel. Oh, and they let the plane sit there for another 30 after all that to wait for 4 more passengers probably having nothing to do with the 7 am flight. You tell me what's wrong. You tell me there is bad weather. OK. I want to be safe. You lie to us. You f*** with our day. You give us no options. You slight us. We'll hate you. We take off. The in-flight crew was gracious. We land and sit on the tarmac for another 40 minutes because oh, there are JetBlue planes in our spot, with no one on them. No one boarding. Just sitting there. Brand management. Horrible. Operations management. A HARVARD business case study in failure. Communications. Horrendous. This is an airline that looks down at their feet at takes one step at a time when they get there. No planning. Just amazing. I'm a loyal customer. I'm understanding. But you lie to us. You mess with our day without answers. You give us no options. Your customers will go from loving you to hating you in a day. And they will hate you until their last breath. Just fascinating. I've asked to meet with them. Because I am amazed at how this goes on. People on the front lines that should not be there. The saving graces? The in-flight crews and the MINT service when it works. But JetBlue is a broken operation and yesterday they were a brand that f***ed us. And then how do they say sorry? A $150 credit for the flight and an extra $100 to boot. I'm even more insulted now. It's not a conspiracy, it's incompetence. Oh, and this just happened a few weeks ago. And the CEO's office called me and I spent 30 minutes giving them polite feedback that no one took. Yes, I got there safely. In the scheme of things these are modern problems in the TRUMP era, yes, But, I'm still a paying customer. And they don't seem to care. I had visions of the CEO, who is not on TWITTER, bathing in lobster juice on the AMALFI coast laughing at us while virgins feed him shrimp. My friend MARC ANDREESSEN suggested JetBlue's delay gave me time to work on my mindfulness. But I couldn't watch ANDERSON COOPER's 60 MINUTES piece on the plane. Wifi doesn't do well with video on the plane. I'm not done, this is just the beginning. Get popcorn. This is bitchy me. But I'm not wrong... Oh, one media thing: BOBBY AXELROD bought NETFLIX after the earnings call... Happy Birthday to JOHN FALCO and LEWIS DVORKIN. | | - Jason Hirschhorn, curator |
|
| Meet the hackers who flip seized Instagram handles and cryptocurrency in a shady, buzzing underground market for stolen accounts and usernames. Their victim’s weakness? Phone numbers. | |
|
Amid unprecedented tumult in entertainment (and the world), The Hollywood Reporter talks to the stars, executives and rank-and-file workers struggling to cope, the experts soothing nerves and the fortunate few who are finding peace in troubled times: "You learn to not let your stress control you." | |
|
Given Uber's soaring ambition, are we destined to live in a world where Uber becomes the Amazon of urban transportation? And is that a good thing? A better solution calls for a collaborative public-private partnership between Uber and city transportation agencies | |
|
When we met in early March, Jonathan Albright was still shrugging off a sleepless weekend. It was a few weeks after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had killed 17 people, most of them teenagers, and promptly turned the internet into a cesspool of finger pointing and conspiracy slinging. | |
|
"We set this up four years ago. It’s called Taking Care of Our Own. I didn’t know how powerful it was going to be.” | |
|
Last September, when the commander-in-chief of toxic masculinity dubbed any football player who didn’t stand during the playing of the national anthem a “son of a bitch,” the war on black men took a spectacular pop-cultural surge. And unlike white cops who shoot unarmed black men, President Trump didn’t even have to claim that he had been afraid. | |
|
We celebrate the iconic recording studios - Sun, Motown, Abbey Road - that have become almost as famous as the musicians who have recorded there. | |
|
New research shows our brains place more weight on vision than hearing in identifying the source of a sound. But why? | |
|
Even as the social media giant tries to not become the arbiter of what’s news — and what’s "trash." | |
|
Are your friendships giving you a boost or bringing you down? | |
| Why does decentralization matter? This episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a discussion that first took as part of an “Intro to Crypto” event that Andreessen Horowitz and #Angels put on in April 2018 -- explores the whys and the hows, from the history of the internet to the culture of crypto communities today. | |
|
It's basically a Fitbit for your man bits that tracks thrust speed and velocity. But don't be too hard on yourself. | |
|
Bertrand Russell (1872 -- 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these in any profound sense. | |
|
Republicans in Congress are clearly collaborating with Donald Trump to interfere with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. | |
|
How the public can control the vast amounts of information compiled by tech companies. | |
|
Barack Obama gave his first major speech since leaving the Oval Office in South Africa. Here's the full transcript of what he said. | |
|
Which Republicans will stand behind a president who puts Russia first? | |
|
Search the phrase "80s version" and you'll find dozens of present-day hits reworked with vintage synths and sax solos. Embedded in them is an emotional lesson on what's missing from the streaming era. | |
|
I've always had trouble reading social cues, but in the strip club, where rules and roles are crystal clear, I finally learned to connect. | |
|
Insects have been an inspiration in music for centuries, starring in pieces from "Flight of the Bumblebee" to Mastodon's "March of the Fire Ants." | |
|
Pussy Riot's Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova hasn't stopped fighting Putin's autocratic rule, using art as activism Tolokonnikova spent 22 months in a Siberian prison camp for a 2012 performance She talks democracy, political engagement, and the US-Russia connection Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova is one brave soul. | |
| © Copyright 2018, The REDEF Group | | |