mccMay 27, 2025

Airlines are like "instead of all those agents, we'll make a sort of assembly line manned by customers. Check in with one machine, drop your baggage off with another."

Then literally anything happens with the computer network requiring an elevated number of customers to need manual intervention, and suddenly you have an enormous immobile line while every single customer lines up before the two (2) remaining agents.

Corporations don't care about "efficiency" they just wanna fire people

Show threadmccMay 27, 2025
I really believe this. We were told capitalist entities will act to minimize costs and maximize profit. But what corporations actually seek to do, for whatever reason, is minimize *labor* cost. They prefer to bear any other kind of cost. They will minimize labor costs even if it increases overall costs and/or hurts profits
Show threadcurtmackMay 27, 2025

@mcc More generally, I've seen it referred to as "soft cost blindness."

Firing people has a hard, objective value. Slowing down your business and frustrating your customers has a murky, intangible cost. Analyzing that sounds hard, so let's just 🪄🎩 hey look at that, the costs are gone, it's all upside now!

Show threadNoodlemazMay 27, 2025
@curtmack @mcc yeah, like people are going to go get on their plane anyway. Whatever you do to piss them off. It's still effectively cost saving to make their experience shitter
Show threadmcc
@noodlemaz @curtmack until it hits the point you fly less.
May 27, 2025 at 7:21pmTusky
Show threadmeiMay 27, 2025
@mcc @noodlemaz @curtmack it's starting to get to the point where i know some people who'd rather spend 20h on trains than fly. and they aren't even train nerds or anything!
Show threadNoodlemazMay 27, 2025
@mei @curtmack @mcc it's very luck of the draw. I'd rather train it. But UK trains suck a$$ and we live close to airport terminals. For people farther out, it would make sense to get trains but pricing can be prohibitive, esp for big families.
Really depends. Doing train rtn to Germany in Aug.
Show threadStumpy The MuttMay 27, 2025
@mcc @noodlemaz @curtmack I hit that point long ago.