Ryanair head Michael O’Leary called his customers “idiots” this week. The chief of the deep-discount, “gotcha”-dependent airline might be the first to say it, but he’s hardly the first to think it.

O’Leary was speaking specifically about fliers who fail to print their boarding passes before they arrive at the airport, and are forced to pay Ryanair’s 60-euro fee. The issue came to a head after a mom paid about $380 so her family could get the paperwork to fly home from Spain to Britain. She aired her concerns on Facebook and got hundreds of thousands of “likes.” O’Leary responded to the controversy as many CEOs would after being administered a truth serum.

According to O’Leary, “We think Mrs. McLeod should pay 60 euros for being so stupid,” he reportedly told The Telegraph before piling on the sarcasm. “She wasn’t able to print her boarding card because, as you know, there are no Internet cafes in Alicante, no hotels where they could print them out for you, and you couldn’t get to a fax machine so some friend at home can print them and fax them to you.”

What do you think? Have you ever showed up to the airport without a boarding pass? Is the fee justified? What are your thoughts?

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Violence at Walmart on Black Friday isn’t rare. One New York woman was arrested last year after punching a Walmart greeter on Black Friday. Likewise, a Los Angeles woman pepper-sprayed 20 people in an effort to improve her chances of getting deals on electronics on the same day in 2011.

One former employee is being forced to completely rearrange her life after another Black Friday altercation.

Jan Sullivan, 73, of St. Augustine, Florida, is moving into a mobile home after being fired from her job as a greeter at Walmart over an altercation with a customer on Black Friday last year, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Sullivan was fired from the employer she called her “home” and “family” for 22 years, three days after she reportedly grabbed a customer’s sweater in response to the customer shoving her.

After sending out dozens of unsuccessful job applications, Sullivan has been forced to sell her home. Making matters worse, she’s not entitled to unemployment benefits either because she was fired for “misconduct.”

This is far from the only instance of dubious treatment by Walmart toward its employees. In fact, the world’s largest retailer faced the biggest class action lawsuit ever in the U.S. when 1.5 million female Walmart employees led by greeter Betty Dukes alleged sex discrimination by their employer. That case may have stalled after an unfavorable Supreme Court decision last year, but, in May, the Labor Department fined Walmart $4.8 million in back wages over unpaid overtime.

Sullivan’s story is also reminiscent of that of Girshriela Green, who found herself battling Walmart for disability after injuries sustained on the job made it impossible to work. As of March, Green was getting by on California food stamps and welfare, while teaming up with Walmart employee labor group OUR Walmart in the hopes of being fully reinstated.

(source: Huffington Post)

1. Making social events unofficially required. Employers frequently assume that employees will view office social events (like staff happy hours or holiday parties) as a treat—and then get offended when employees don’t want to go. Most employees would prefer that employers make it clear when events are mandatory, rather than implying they’re optional and then penalizing people who don’t attend. And managers should realize that not everyone wants to socialize with their co-workers. Requiring employees to attend events that are ostensibly to build their morale may have the opposite effect.

2. Pressuring employees to donate to charity. Employers often mean well when they organize workplace charity drives, but too often managers pressure employees to donate and even monitor individual participation. Charity drives are great, but participation needs to be strictly voluntary, both officially and unofficially. How employees spend their money is their business, not their employer’s.

3. Calling employees who are on vacation. Too many employers act as if employees are on-call day and night, even when they’re on vacation—which means that too many employees have had their vacations interrupted by calls and emails from the office. Companies that operate this way will have trouble retaining great employees over time, because great people with options will leave for companies that respect their personal lives.

4. Holding endless meetings. There’s nothing worse than knowing you have a looming deadline but being forced to sit in a long and needless meeting—but it’s also incredibly common. Most employees report that they waste far too many hours a week in meetings without clear agendas or purposes, and that they’re forced to sit around listening to idle conversation when they could be working productively at their desks.

5. Not making hard decisions. One common way this plays out is with managers who won’t address performance problems or fire under-performers—and if you’ve ever worked somewhere where laziness or shoddy work was tolerated, you know how frustrating and demoralizing this can be. But it plays out in other ways as well. For example, a manager who’s afraid of conflict may hesitate to make necessary course corrections mid-way through a project, but then be unhappy with your final product. Good managers know that their job is to solve problems, not avoid them, and that they can’t value preserving harmony or avoiding tough conversations above all else.

6. Delegating without truly delegating. Sometimes a manager is so nervous about, or invested in, a project that even though she has technically assigned it to a staffer, she doesn’t really let go of it, continuing to drive the work herself or even doing some of it herself. This leads to confusion about who is actually responsible for the work getting done and diminished ownership (and therefore diminished performance) on the part of the staffer it was assigned to.

7. Hinting, rather than speaking straightforwardly. Some managers feel kinder or more polite sugarcoating a difficult conversation, but it’s not at all kind to let someone miss an important message. When a manager sugarcoats to the point that her message is missed, or presents requirements as mere suggestions, staffers end up confused about expectations. And the manager ends up frustrated that their suggestions weren’t acted upon. Most employees prefer straightforward communication so they don’t need to figure out what they’re really supposed to hear.

(credit: Alison Green)

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