United Airlines Cuts Cocktail Picks, Saves $80K/Year

Bring your own limes, just like BA for my G&Ts 🙂

The wooden ones that look like an airplane? I really like those, I even have a few in my briefcase that I had saved after using them.

How am I supposed to clean my teeth?

reminds me of Bob Crandall at AA and the removal of the olive from the salad... It went downhill from there.

The story on the olives was that Bob Crandall was flying and noticed practically no one was eating the olives. Basically, AA was paying to put something on salads that probably 90% of their customers didn't want. Not a tremendous amount of money but I appreciate Bob's attention to detail and decision making to save money on things that frankly weren't needed. I flew AA frequently then and was almost always upgraded so when the salad was delivered I knew there was typically 3 olives in it (I hate olives) and made sure I fished out all 3 before starting to eat the salad so I didn't accidently bite into one.

My guess is that the internal marketing is supposed to show to employees that United is looking to cost cuts everywhere, no matter how small, and not just with employees. This may address concerns that employees have that people are losing jobs or being furloughed, yet United still spends money on unnecessary non-employee costs.

Better they cut cocktail picks than fire another employee

Less plastic = More better

Why on Earth did you need a stick through the piece of lemon or lime in your drink?

@Mike C : So the flight attendant doesn't have to touch the lemon with his/her bare hand. S/he can just stab it with the stick.

Chris T - how about tongs or a fork being used instead of fingers?

It's bus service so what's the big deal? I can't burn my miles fast enough..........

Unized did that so they say, " Look, we are the first airline to cut cost by eliminating the cocktail stick. " What the really should eliminate, are those silly napkins. Oh no, wait, those are marketing platforms..

Every half decent martini deserves an olive on a stick. Will martinis be the next thing to be cut?

How do you stir your drink?

That's my only question/concern on this TBH...

Here comes the United Hate Chorus. So we aren’t sure they should “sell” the change as a cost cutting measure (truth) vs “sell” it in some other manner (lie). Seems United is going to be wrong either way by you haters. I can hardly wait for the usual “that’s the last straw, I will never fly United again”.

Will the cost of the drink reflect that it no longer has a lime or anything to stir it with, cause it looks like I’m getting less.

@ Bill n DC
Limes in a G&T? You’re a barbarian!

Everyone knows it has to be lemons. Everyone.

Incidentally, is it just me that thinks the world’s best G&Ts are now served in Madrid (and yes, I know they more often use lime than lemon)? Who’d have thought the archetypal English cocktail would now be the most fashionable drink in Spain? And I love the way they serve an absolutely massive drink, not the standard (tint) British measure. Though, in fairness to BA, every single flight attendant I’ve encountered has been happy to give double bottles and to keep the refills coming...

I miss travel...

You need a fleet of cost accountants to validate the premise. Just sayin...

If I remember correctly, the Japanese word is “kaizen”. It’s basically about eliminating waste. I used to work in the shipping industry, and there is a lot of required documents that have to be provided with each shipment. For instance, a bill of lading has to be produced in three copies. Our default setting was to print 8, ie 5 wasted copies. Our small office changed the setting to the legally required 3, and as an immediate result saved approximately 5000 pieces of paper a year. The main upside, however, was that the number of printers breaking down per year decreased massively- and this turned out to be the big money saver from this tiny change in procedure.

If you can't sell booze in a closed environment you are bad at business

All for a piddly 80k a year

First, this is a great move for the environment which you have not bothered to mention in your post. Second, what’s wrong with justifying it as a cost saving measure to FAs? So many have lost their jobs and several others are grounded. If it makes them feel that the management is saving some funds that could go towards their paychecks, I think it’s fine.

"First, this is a great move for the environment which you have not bothered to mention in your post. "

Really? Just how "great" is it? I'm dying to know what impact it will have (hint...zero). But people will feel better, and feelings are more important than actual outcomes.

“Take too many ingredients off the pizza, and it’s not a pizza anymore.”Gordon Bethune

I think you need to specify "toothpicks" otherwise your phrasing could mean "choices".

They had to settle with Dr Dao imagine what they could have saved had they not dragged him off the jet

Airlines have been nickel and dimeing passengers forever!
No free luggage, no smiling faces, smaller seats, more crowded planes with TINY bathrooms. Need I go on.
Come on America...don't waste your time complaining to poor customer service employees. Not even the CEO or CFO.
Write letters to ALL of the Board of Directors.
Not sure if they'll understand, but they should see the " real" world " of employees. After all...they fly free and with upgrades.
Time for passengers to unite and tell
the higher powers what we WANT, as YOUR customers..

They probably spent twice as much as they saved in the proposal meetings, writing and distributing the announcements, press releases and "retraining" staff about the new policy. 80k a year is trivial to UA and is less than the company cost for one flight attendant for a year.

While I get trying to save costs everywhere there comes a point where it isn't efficient.

I think it has a lot to do with perception to mainline employees - any flight attendant or ground support employee can look at this example and equate it to a job saved. It isn't a lot in the long run, but if you don't manage the pennies then how can you manage the dollars?

There's an old Walmart story about how sales eventually got so high that they started rounding the cents off the P&L because it wouldn't print right otherwise. Sam Walton made them re-format the spreadsheet to fit the cents back on the paper. If you show your employees that you don't care about the small things, then they'll start "rounding off" the small aspects of their jobs too. The rounding error starts to accumulate at that point.