By now, most of us have heard the story of the jetBlue flight attendant who, shall we say, had a hard day at work and dramatically quit.
On the off chance you haven’t heard, here’s the breakdown: On Tuesday, Steven Slater was working aboard a jetBlue plane at John F. Kennedy International Airport when an apparently rude passenger caused Slater to be hit in the head with her luggage. Slater then swore at said passenger over the intercom, grabbed two beers, and departed the airplane via the inflatable slide emergency exit.
Much like the adorable but fake Jenny, Slater has embodied working-class rage for many an Internet user, and the Internet is an enthusiastic if fickle mistress.
Yesterday, the Internet lauded Slater with a rash of Facebook fan pages. Today, the Internet has honored Slater in song.
“The Ballad of Steven Slater” is the title of at least three musical offerings we saw today on YouTube. We’ll embed the one with the least profanity here:
For those of you less offended by the f-bomb, the Mashable staff also recommends this ditty by Jonathan Mann.
Not only has Slater seen a wave of support from his newfound web-based following; he’s also caused a huge spike of online attention for his erstwhile employer, jetBlue.
As analytics blog Buzz Study notes, “The incident has created a tricky situation for jetBlue, one of the first companies to use social media to be transparent and address customers’ concerns and compliments via the Web.” In other words, while there are exponentially more mentions of the airline this week than there were in days and weeks past, a significant chunk of those mentions are less positive than jetBlue might like.
The airline responded with a tongue-in-cheek blog post today, saying, “While we can’t discuss the details of what is an ongoing investigation, plenty of others have already formed opinions on the matter. Like, the entire Internet… While this episode may feed your inner Office Space, we just want to take this space to recognize our 2,300 fantastic, awesome and professional Inflight Crewmembers for delivering the JetBlue Experience you’ve come to expect of us.”
What’s your take on the Steven Slater saga? Working class hero or 15-minutes-of-famer whose time is just about up?
[img credit: doistrakh]
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More About: airline, flight attendant, jetblue, steven-slater, youtube
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