There’s a story going viral about Katarzyna Richter, who identifies herself as Operations Director for LOT Polish Cabin Crew. She has only been in this position since April 2019, but according to her LinkedIn has worked for several other airlines, including Qatar Airways, Gulf Air, Etihad Airways, and Emirates. She started off as cabin crew, and then moved to cabin crew recruitment.
She recently flew British Airways and then took it upon herself to do the following on her Facebook:
- Criticize the appearance of British Airways cabin crew
- Take pictures of their appearance to reinforce her point
- To add insult to injury, she has a public Facebook profile, and even used hashtags, as if she was trying to amplify the story
Translated to English, she wrote the following in addition to the pictures:
“Today, my attention was drawn to grooming and appearance of British Airways cabin crew members, unpolished shoes, holes in tights, too tight uniform, double chin, rotten and uneven teeth, messy hairstyle.”
She then goes on to ask that if the crew is so sloppy with their appearance, are they equally sloppy with their other duties? Lastly she says “I am curious if you as a passenger judge cabin crew by the way they look?”
Obviously she got a lot of pushback on her post, and has now deleted it and issued the following apology:
I would like to apologize very much to the British Airways crew and to everyone affected by I regret my behaviour – I should not judge the competence and appearance of employees of another line I’m sorry again.
I’d note that this apology came after lots of negative feedback from the public, in which she continued to defend herself.
Ironically she also claims to be the founder of a company called “Deal With Culture,” which she describes as follows:
Helping individuals and companies explore cultural differences and make their operation more effective. Providing cross-cultural trainings, delivering keynotes on personal brand building and communication.Online courses focusing on career development. Cross cultural recruitment services.
I’m not sure she’s the one who should be providing cross-cultural training.
Bottom line
This is inappropriate on so many levels. It’s one thing if she just wrote those things (which is completely out of line to begin with), but the fact that she also posted pictures of the crew, and also posted all of this publicly, is so out of line.
LOT Polish is now investigating this incident.
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