American Airlines Fires Employee for Good Customer Service

I don't particularly want to add my voice to the chorus criticizing American Airlines for firing one of its web designers because he engaged in act of gratuitous customer service. But there are lessons to be learned.

You can read all about it here and here . You can read the original complaint about American's website here. And you can find the response by the fired employee--known only as Mr X-- here .

It would be easy to snark that by responding in a prompt, polite and informative manner, Mr X was clearly in contravention of American's customer service policy and demonstrated clear contempt for the airline's values, so I won't do that.

I don't really need to, because anyone who reads Mr X's letter will quickly realize that AA's official reason for dismissing him--that he violated a non-disclosure agreement or, as corporate communications director Billy Sanez put it in responding to USA Today, "violated company secrets"--is complete bullshit. Read the response. Find me a company secret. There are none. Unless someone at AA thinks it's a secret that a giant, global airline has a somewhat bureaucratic culture that sometimes gets in the way of getting things done.

So if the official reason doesn't hold up, there must be a real reason, and the snarky one I suggested above--that Mr X responded to the complaint like a human being rather than a corporate lawyer--makes as much sense as any other.

Here's what I'd like to believe happened: Some mid-level manager at AA who felt affronted by the extremely mild concession that the airline's culture might not be as nimble as it should be launched an immediate witch-hunt. (According to one report, it took AA about an hour to track down Mr X via his e-mail account and give him his marching orders.) At that point, the rest of the company reflexively closed ranks around the manager who fired Mr X and came up with the best rationale it could for his decision, which the PR people were then obliged to reiterate.

It is inconceivable to me that PR people were involved in the original decision to dismiss someone, because I know AA has several very good in-house PR folks and I know it has an extremely good--and social media savvy--PR agency. They would have known--as would anyone with half a brain--that the firing would be perceived as an over-sensitive over-reaction and would trigger a firestorm of criticism and even further scrutiny of the airline's customer service, plus mockery of the airline's failure to "get" social media.

The lesson here is not that companies need stricter guidelines to restrict employee use of social media. It's that they need stricter guidelines to restrict idiot managers who believe any frank and honest dialogue with a customer is a breach of company's secrets.