Adjusting to Work at Home
My personality is generally that of a proton – always positive but like many lately this position has been challenged on a daily basis. Challenged professionally as I watch work disappear and all-around retreat into cocoons of reduced activity, contracting, and hiring. Challenged personally, facing down social isolation, economic challenges, and uncertainty that is even more acute in the United States with the added burden of healthcare insurance
I’ll confess – I was probably a little more prepared for the social isolation than others who had a regular commute to an office as I had moved off the corporate ladder some time back. That had reduced my travel and decreased interactions to limited engagements on small projects with the majority of my work home-based. My office was ideally configured for working from home and I had spent time and energy optimizing my network equipment to provide a stable wired connection and mesh WiFi network to die for. If you are interested in what that takes I will post a more detailed account of what’s required in the coming weeks.
So the change to stay at home was not much of a change and the biggest decline in human interaction was linked to the loss of access to group classes at my local gym that I would attend most days. Not so for many other people who have been forced into teleworking as the world moved to shelter in place at different levels depending on your state and the regulatory enforcement.
Travel Evaporates
Meanwhile travel cratered along with the economy. If you want a sense of how severe this is, take a look at this 3-minute video of all the parked airplanes that up tumult this crisis were flying every day multiple times per day
As of today, as I write this, unemployment in the US is running at 36.5 Million people with 3 Million added just this past week. So even if travel was available the capacity of the population to afford the luxury is related to historical thoughts for most.
Based on estimates flights are down 97% from where they were before the crisis. All the airlines in the US and around the world are reeling with some already declaring bankruptcy and many likely to follow. Meanwhile, many travelers continue to pile on misery almost gleeful in their disdain for the airlines, ironic in the case of some pundits whose business seems predicated on offering advice on travel and airline tickets. That includes Joe Brancatelli whose entire business is based on the travel industry and in his view deserve:
Not a dollar. Not a dime. Not a penny. So now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let’s admit what we all know: The airlines are going to get a bailout even if they don’t deserve one.
Nice. I have to wonder what his business model looks like when the airlines disappear and travel returns to an activity limited to the rich?
Government Bailout
There are lots of aspects to the bailout that are buried in the detail and it varies by industry and while I don’t know every aspect of the deal for airlines it included preserving the jobs of the tens of thousands of employees who work in the industry. Airlines also have specific requirements mandated to get the license from the government to fly in the country’s airspace. They have to service-specific airports in remote and underserved areas which can be uneconomical but are required as part of their deal to be allowed to fly. They have to keep flying and use the takeoff and landing slots otherwise they lose them. And beyond that flying airplanes safely is an extraordinarily complex activity that requires they be flown, maintained, and serviced on an ongoing basis. It’s a big coordinated dance that has been finely tuned over many years to deliver travel to everyone at affordable prices while maintaining a six sigma safety record.
As the demand disappeared so to did the flights – for commercial airlines the plane has to be 70-80% full before they break even on cost (the so-called break-even load factor). So with empty planes airlines, are burning cash and they have naturally responded by reducing flights to reduce their cash burn rate. Staff have been put on stand-by, their hours reduced leaving most at home and only working occasionally
Front Line Staff at High Risk
But from the beginning the staff not here planes were on the front line at high risk and with limited protection. As the New York times detailed there were not many other jobs that placed individuals at such high risk of explores to contracting COVID19
But workers showed up and continued to deliver service even in the face of customers who disdain reached new lows in their interactions with the crews. As we learned more, the airlines introduced new procedures eventually settling on the insistence on masks for everyone and attempting to apply physical distancing policies that included blocking out all middle seats on a plane. Remember, that break-even load factor? Well now with physical distancing that’s 1/3 of the east left empty so every flight loses them money.
Meanwhile, crews flew around the country and world, bringing people stranded in other countries back home and repatriating residents from other countries. Medical staff were flown for free as the airline tried to do their part in supporting a nation under strain flying medical personnel to places like New York that was overwhelmed with cases and in need of additional experts.
My Flight is Full
Having watched all of this unfold over the passing weeks as everyone worked to do their part this post
I guess @united is relaxing their social distancing policy these days? Every seat full on this 737 pic.twitter.com/rqWeoIUPqL
— Ethan Weiss (@ethanjweiss) May 9, 2020
painted a picture of lacking understanding and sympathy of the extenuating circumstances for the individuals trying to do the best with the hadn’t they have been dealt…lacking compassion.
I can’t speak with any authority about the specific circumstances but I’m going to guess. In what would have typically been one of perhaps 5 or more flights per day flying the route there was now one. The flight had the middle seats blocked out but suddenly there was an influx of passengers who had been released from duty in New York and all wanted to get home. I don’t know if they paid for their flight or was this a free flight. As the passenger load increased the gate agents and staff are left with choices to make. Do they prevent 30% of the waiting passengers from getting on board and ask them to come back tomorrow or do they open up seats and try and get everyone home?
No surprise for which choice was made. Could they have done a better job – perhaps asking the passengers what they want or at least informing them of the decision and letting individuals make their own choices – maybe? But I am willing to bet there was a limited number of staff available and many could have been junior with less experience.
It struck me as being no different to a patient showing up at an Emergency Room that had been closed due to capacity or other issues. There is not a doctor that would not have come out and triaged cases showing up outside and done the best with the poor hand they had been dealt with. It is not just doctors who triage in urgent cases – we all triage everything in our lives deciding what to spend our time and resources on, both personally and professionally and this was no different.
In the follow up response, the airlines are now offering notification to passengers to let them know that their flight is too full for full social distancing. But that mechanism had not even been imagined until the problem arose in that unique situation
You Get What you Want (or Pay for)
The airlines have been delivering the product that the customers wanted to pay for. They would love to upgrade the experience, reduce the seat density, and increase space but that’s not what people are willing to pay for. They responded to the low-cost carrier movement that offered no-frills experience that in the early days offered flights that were near free. They attracted huge numbers of flyers and then loading on extra costs charging for everything beyond a seat on a plane. The national carriers responded to the demand for the lowest cost flying with no frills. And so began the complaints and misplaced outrage from passengers who selected the cheapest option for their ticket and then pretended they did not know that this did not include carrying onboard the overstuffed bag that they want to ram into space above the seat.
It’s the same as the food industry that deliver the sweet-salty cheap food we want to pay for. It is the same as the media that produce content that people watch. If it bleeds it leads, but it is also true that if we did not watch this content there would not be a demand to create it. If we were not all curious and driven to watch then there would be no backups on the highway from a crash on the other side from all the rubbernecking. What is delivered is what people are asking for and willing to pay for.
So enough with all the complaining – I’ve sat in my share of middle seats and been stuck on delayed flights and left stranded in airports plenty of times. But one of my best experiences came from a 12 hour or more delay stuck in an airport for a mechanical problem (the airline protecting our safety btw).
I ended up talking to a lady and our shared experience of fathers who would not talk about their war experiences for what was undiagnosed PTSD. I learned something extraordinary – sadly a little late to help my own father but still helpful in understanding him. She had the same complaint about never really getting to the bottom of what her father had done on the beaches of D-Day. Something he would never talk about with her or her family, much like my own father and his experience in a Nazi prison, fighting in the resistance in the occupied Netherlands and ultimately fleeing for his life. But that changed when she took him to Normandy for one of the remembrance days and she found himself in a restaurant sat with other veterans. She watched and listened as he found compassion and opportunity to share their grief and stories with people who had shared experiences with a slew of other veterans who had been through similar experiences and were comfortable sharing in surrounded by compassion.
Compromise
I’ve been traveling since I was a baby – I am told my first flight I was 3 months old
We need Compromising not the Kompromat that seems to pervade our lives. We are in desperate need of compromise and compassion.
Perhaps it requires a shared experience to allow for understanding as it did for veterans from D-Day. Whatever the requirement we all need to pause for a moment before launching into our latest tirade of frustration. We are all in this together – as Marcus Aurelius said many, many years ago, or to be more precise as captured in the Stoic’s view
What injures the hive, injures the bee,
The response to this crisis will not come from an individual, a single organization, or even a group or government but rather from all of us contributing in different ways. But to achieve that requires compromise. It requires you take that small step of understanding and try and place yourself in the shoes of others. Taking that step before you post your frustration on whatever channel you prefer. Those others could be on the completely different side of the issue at hand but discounting and belittling their views and perspectives is not the starting point.
Try placing yourself in their shoes and trying to think through their position and see if you can persuade yourself to see or even agree with their view. If you can’t even try to do that why would you expect them to do the same for you and your position?
Naturally, that is a two-way street and requires both parties to be willing and perhaps that becomes a barrier – but I would ask again, how do you break that barrier down and find common ground and compromise
Your incremental step is to believe in yourself and your ability to make a difference, no matter how big or small
One person can change history. One person can make a difference, for better and for worse
That one step should be a positive step forward.
Will we be the generation who knew the most but did the least
