The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Accommodate: meaning “made fitting.” Whether it refers to changing something to suit someone’s wishes or providing someone with something he needs,accommodate typically involves making something fit.

Re-accommodate: well, in the plummeting stock values of United Airline these days, the meaning is a little less clear. I guess it might mean cleaning the blood off that recalcitrant passenger who was dragged literally kicking and screaming off the plane when United decided they needed his seat for their employees and letting him back on the plane, maybe in the cargo hold with other dangerous potential explosives.

I’m the last guy in the world who thinks the customer is always right. I think my clients ought to be given as much courtesy as possible, but c’mon, you’ve met folks who not only aren’t right, they’re jerks, they’re insufferable, they’re the ones that should be thrown off the plane. In mid-flight preferably. But United Airlines, let’s get honest here, they no more think the customer is always right than the Sunnis think their Shi-ite neighbors need a Welcome Wagon when they move in. United, and most of the other mega corporations who fly the post 9-11 skies, don’t give a rat’s patootie about their customers’ comfort, they care about the bottom line, not my bottom crammed into their ridiculously narrow seats. You ridden on a Greyhound lately? It’s no dreaded Mexican bus with the chickens and the kids on the roof anymore, it’s cushy, it’s comfortable, it’s deluxe compared to my experience as air freight.

And that bottom line they worry about? Deduct about $ 1 billion from that and see if the CEO still thinks re-accomodation means anything in the real world. If I were him, I’d look up re-assignment. Without the stock bonuses and the golden parachute. The price of arrogance can be plenty high.

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