It's on a blog, and she's not in the job. This was likely the first time she could actually "tell it as it is". Any other time and even if it were a more moderate rant, she would have likely lost her job, with additional prejudices.
And this is where I'm a bit uncomfortable sometimes. Not with SQ in particular, but this whole thing where a customer is entitled to be right when they are clearly wrong (and even more so when that customer is behaving maliciously). "The customer is always right" - hell no, and I loathe that saying; yes, many say it is not the literal interpretation that is important but the frame of mind or ethos that it sets in order to deal with customers, which I still argue is not conducive enough to keep that rule as customers themselves use that very "rule" to their own
carte blanche malicious advantage.
In a way sometimes, this is why I like the Qantas FAs (on a good day), as they are very accommodating and understanding but they are still
real people.
Given a passenger who really does nothing wrong and is considerate etc., there would be little to no need for this whole discussing attitudes between FAs of different airlines business.
And I recall an AFF'er who recently flew Suites and another fellow passenger was complaining so much about the AFF'er and how they must have been upgraded and not entitled to be in Suites. I wonder what nationality that person was, not a Singaporean by any chance? The writer does like to bag out her fellow country-men for being terrible as passengers.
I'm not Singaporean myself but I can kind of understand the culture (and I believe you understand it as well), and we both know there's a large grain of truth in what she is saying about her fellow countrymen.
I'd like to see the post where a fellow AFFer was being bagged for "not belonging" to Suites - my guess it is in the very large SQ Suites thread. It's not the first time such a complaint has been noticed (not in SQ in general, but other airlines as well), though it does vary as to how large the issue gets.
The funny thing is that even if
ang moh seem to behave better on average than Singaporeans (maybe only on SQ), we can all agree that an ill-behaving
ang moh might be one of the worst nightmares to contend with.
What? She was surprised that as a FA she would miss birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas etc?
Did she even read the job description before signing on?
My guess is 'no', though my suspicion is that such detail would not be in the job description; more in their contract, of which I have no idea when they get their first exposure to.
She did admit freely that she did not consider all of the ramifications of the job when she was given it (and others made the same mistake). As for the short time in the job, part of it would be stress but another part of it would likely be forced redundancy once you reach a certain age unless you manage to get promoted or off the flying gig and onto another position in the company.
When it's all said and done, I'm sure her story is not isolated, nor is it necessarily typical, and we can also find other FAs in other airlines who would write a similar entry.