Dear Reader,
having read so many negative reviews regarding my former employer Lufthansa-I would, if you permit, shed a bit of light on why the service tends to be bad.
Let’s focus on the ground staff(counters, ticketing, weight and balance, catering, and all the behind scenes stuff the passenger never sees but with which you couldn’t fly). Lufthansa overworks and underpays. The gentlemen collecting the garbage from my front door in Munich earn three times the pay. Sure, Lufthansa hasn’t laid off in the past years...instead no one gets a raise and basically you’re ’’stuck’’with your pay grade no matter how well or poorly you do your job. Financial incentive has not ’’dawned’’ on an extremely arrogant corporate culture as of yet.
I worked the counters and flights for over seven years...I tend to think I was very helpful, friendly, and courteous towards my passengers (which is more than I can say of many colleagues). However, after six days of rotating shifts- (at the beginning of the shift I would get up at 2am by the end of the shift I was working until midnight) ones nerves and physical condition is frayed at best. Life consisted of scrambling for sleep months on end.
During the course of my daily work I was dumped on by passengers, flight managers, dipatchers, operations, crews and whoever decided that their bad day or own incompetence was my fault. Everything from the missing meal on board, missing tickets , to the missing loadsheet becomes our fault. Not to mention we are at fault for the faulty baggage cart, bad movie, lack of toilet paper, and the overweight seat mate on the past flight.
Of course, due to cost cutting measures, so often one is left alone to deal with problems small and large while trying to manifest a flight with over 150 passengers. Try that one on for size. When everything is done and our passengers are on the flight back to ’’happy land’’ we have to answer a barrage of questions from everything regarding a 30 second late pushback to why our stupid yellow scarf is on crooked. Paranoia runs rampent among ground staff who eventually become convinced there is no life nor job outside of LH. The environment at Lufthansa is not collegial between departments and but all too often is downright nasty and belligerent.
So now the bottom line...you hardly take home more than 1100 euros a month-try to get a flat in Munich or Frankfurt under 600 euros-, get to pay off your own expensive but poor quality uniform, and those standby tickets aren’t as cheap as you thought. So who’s left to be in a good mood?
Believe me, I feel sorry for the passengers...cold service...overpriced tickets. All I can recommend is be happy you just fly with them (they are safe and the pilots are the best)- and not work for them.
Sincerely,
Suckered for Seven Years but no more