A United Airlines employee and customer got into a confrontation, whereby the customer service agent threatened to call ICE on the customer, claiming he doesn’t “act like a citizen,” as flagged by View from the Wing.
Regardless of how either person was acting during this disagreement, that’s completely unacceptable, and this employee needs to be held accountable, in my opinion.
United employee crosses the line in fight with customer
There’s an 82-second video posted on Reddit, showing a confrontation between a United Airlines customer service agent at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and a customer. Here’s what the Reddit user who shared the video wrote:
This happened yesterday at San Francisco International airport. United employee was rude and dismissive with customer so he asks for her name to report her. The employee pulls out her phone and starts to record the interaction. At that moment she says “Maybe we should call ICE on you. You’re not acting like a citizen”. Whatever the f*ck that means… Customer is an American citizen.
The video starts with the United employee pointing her phone at the passenger (who is pointing his phone at her), saying “maybe we should call ICE on you,” later justifying it by saying “cause you don’t act like a citizen.”
As you’d expect, things really escalate from there. The United employee keeps saying “get away” (while not walking away herself), while the guy keeps daring her to call ICE. Another United employee steps in and asks if he wants police to get involved, to which he responds that he wants ICE to get involved.
She then keeps telling him to get “out of [her] face,” while he repeatedly tells her that she’s going to get fired. They then call one another racist, and he says he’s going to sue United, and calls her “lazy as hell.”
This is a really bad look for the United employee
Let’s assume that this guy was just awful and rude to the United employee. It’s entirely possible. Maybe he should even be added to United’s no-fly list for recording an employee, in violation of the carrier’s contract of carriage. The reason I say that is because even so, there’s absolutely nothing that justifies this employee’s actions.
For one, airline employees should be able to deescalate situations. If she felt like she couldn’t resolve this, she should’ve walked away, called a supervisor, or asked for the authorities to intervene. There’s simply no excuse for threatening to call ICE on a customer, claiming he’s not “acting like a citizen.”
Like, is she suggesting that US citizens are consistently well behaved, or what part of his actions aren’t that of a US citizen? It’s particularly sad to see someone who also appears to belong to a minority group saying such a hurtful and incendiary thing, since you’d think she’d have a bit more understanding for how words have meaning, and can hurt people.
For the record, while I have strong feelings about the current state of ICE, this has nothing to do with whether someone is for or against ICE. This woman works in a customer service role. There’s no context in which she should be calling ICE on a customer because she doesn’t like how they’re behaving, let alone when her only logic is that the passenger isn’t “acting like a citizen.”
All that being said, I’m a softie. I hope this woman doesn’t lose her job over this, but I do hope she seriously thinks about the importance of her words, is retrained, and apologizes to this guy. I understand that in moments of rage, people might get a fight or flight response, and say things they don’t mean. But goodness, threatening to call ICE on someone really rolled off her tongue pretty easily…
Bottom line
A United Airlines customer service agent at SFO was caught on video threatening to call ICE on a customer, claiming he wasn’t “acting like a citizen.” He may have very well been poorly behaved. However, this woman needs better deescalation training.
Sticking a camera in a customer’s face (even when they’re doing the same) and telling them to “get away” repeatedly is almost never going to achieve that result.
What do you make of this interaction?
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