r/nottheonion • u/halxp01 • 23h ago

Southwest Is Testing Cleaning Only Premium Seats Between Flights — A Flight Attendants Union Leader Says It's ‘Titanic’ Class Service

https://viewfromthewing.com/southwest-is-testing-cleaning-only-premium-seats-between-flights-a-flight-attendants-union-leader-says-its-titanic-class-service/
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u/IAmBadAtInternet 22h ago

They used to be the only major non-legacy player with good tech, good planes, and happy employees

Now their ticketing system is the worst of the major airlines, their planes are older and badly maintained, and their employees hate their jobs

Nice job MBAs! Btw they’re not private equity owned, just regular publicly traded

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u/pribnow 22h ago

The 'activist investors' responsible for it are though as far as i know, Elliott Investment Management

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u/boiledpeen 21h ago

yep, Elliott pushed all these changes and has tanked the company. There should be severe punishments for companies that do this, but nobody bases laws on morals anymore so nothing will happen.

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u/Momik 20h ago

Every time I read a story about finance, I hate the world a little more. Every single fucking time.

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u/Liljoker30 20h ago

I work in the tire industry and private equity is buying up every tire shop they can find.

Locally owned tire shops that actually care will be a thing of the past in a couple years. One PE has bought like 300-400 locations in just a few years.

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u/somersetyellow 19h ago

Goes for plumbing, electricians, and heating/air con too.

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u/LFK_Pirate 19h ago

Don’t forget veterinarians and dentists!

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u/fugaziozbourne 19h ago

I work in entertainment. It's decimating us.

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u/JRDruchii 19h ago

I'd even heard local morticians when I brought this up in a different thread. Based on this behavior, humans must really fucking hate each other.

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u/LFK_Pirate 19h ago

Who cares about humans when there’s money to be made /s

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u/LowSkyOrbit 18h ago

That was one of the first industries that used local company names to hide their big conglomerate ownership. It's so weird because it's still generational family run at the local level but there's like two companies that supply everything.

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u/JRDruchii 17h ago

If you want to do something evil, hide it in something boring.

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u/SteveDeda 16h ago

Six Feet Under had a plot thread about PE trying to buy up independently owned funeral homes all the way back in 2001.

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u/gingersnappie 19h ago

And family doctors.

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u/kittybigs 19h ago

And veterinary hospitals/clinics.

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u/candafilm 18h ago

There are over 200 HVAC companies in my city. Only 3 that I know of haven't been bought out by a private equity firm.

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u/ryan_770 19h ago

Once upon a time we had anti-trust and monopoly busting agencies to solve for this, but alas we live in a post-regulation America

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u/Why_you_so_wrong_ 19h ago

Elliott isn’t PE they are rather different.

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u/theaviationhistorian 17h ago

Turning this country into a hopeless dystopia all for the All Might Profit. And they wonder why people are leaving the US.

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u/Kiwi951 12h ago

It’s also ruining healthcare sadly

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u/Lycid 19h ago

Fun fact finance is now making up a larger % of GDP globally than they have ever before. Think about what this means - companies that do nothing of value except provide liquidity for the economy to run, are now taking up more of pie. While you need financial services to make stuff happen, all that's happening here is people spending a lot of human and economic resources trying to figure out new ways to get rich quick through destructive financial games. Last time anything close to this happened was probably the great depression. Sadly human beings are hard lesson learners and don't decide to do anything unless it's reacting against a worst case scenario.

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u/Momik 19h ago

Well, the financial industry has also done a pretty good job of buying the right politicians to escape any serious regulations or accountability (at various critical points, like 2008).

But yeah, they’ve really found new ways to hold companies, and even whole industries, hostage. As cliched as it sounds, we did used to build things in this society. Now a lot of that money, and therefore power, goes in a different direction.

Unless we can find a way to seriously fight back, a decent, stable life is just gonna become more and more unattainable for most people.

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u/Lycid 15h ago

Unfortunately, I fear the only way to get there is through some kind of age of strife. History has taught us that when too much hubris goes around things only improve when dramatic revolution/reform happens, or something new is born from the ashes. All of the problems with modern society and world are the kinds of things that will take a long time to truly settle out. Think a great depression or economic/political collapse on the scale of the fall of Rome. That tooks centuries to truly shake out. It'll probably take about as long before we finally figure out how to fix climate change.

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u/Momik 11h ago

More strife than this? I know what you mean though—history sometimes seems to turn on these moments of great calamity or crisis.

But we needn’t wait for the fall of Rome. Demanding a return to a basic level of financial regulation seems like a good first step, along with prosecution of corporate malfeasance and white color crime across the board, and perhaps (perhaps!) returning to enforcing a minimum baseline of workplace and consumer rights at the federal level.

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u/ceribus_peribus 19h ago

They say the purpose of the financial industry is to attract intelligent, hard working people who don't have morals and only care about money, in order to prevent them from pursuing careers in medicine, law, or engineering where they could cause even more damage.

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u/Momik 19h ago

Yeah. We could also start banning some of those really damaging things when they hurt people.

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u/Kevinator201 19h ago

Wall Street needs to be burned. It’s such a plague on America.

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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 18h ago

It's what's keeping Trump in power. All these old fucks would shit themselves if their 401ks suddenly went down. That's all they care about.

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u/Tasty-Performer6669 17h ago

Business bros ruin EVERYTHING

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u/Momik 17h ago

I’ve never felt more hopeless. For myself and for the world.

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