On Monday March 12, United Airlines killed a dog. A United flight attendant forced a woman to place her French bulldog puppy in the overhead bin for the three and a half hour flight, and upon landing the woman found her dog dead in his carrier. Over the past week, United Airlines has been the perpetrator of two more dog-related incidents, both of which involved sending animals to the wrong continent. Reports state that United Airlines is responsible forthe most animal deaths per animal placed in their care of any airline company. This is not the first PR disaster United Airlines has faced (remember #LeggingsGate, when a girl was denied from boarding her flight because she was wearing leggings, and the dragging of a passenger off of an airplane due to United’s accidental overbooking of the flight), and for the extremely limited satisfaction in United expressed by customers, one would assume that United would become less and less appealing to travellers.
So why is it that, while United’s stock dropped 4.3 percent in the first couple hours after the initial dragging man incident, it recovered almost completely by the end of the day? Why, according to a CNBC Article, did United’s stock level out from its 2.6 percent drop within two days after the death of the dog?
As a person who wrote their I-Search on dogs, I was horrified by the seeming lack of care United had for its canine passengers. The grief of the dead dog’s owner nearly brought me to tears, and United’s response to this incident claiming that the flight attendant had not known the bag had a dog in it left me outraged. But in the end, when the time comes for me to fly to the north of the country for college visits, I will be sitting in a United seat and eating crappy United pretzels. My dad has flown with United for years with his company, so we have miles with them that would make the trip affordable. For my family, the financial gain outweighs the moral implications of patronizing a company we loathe, and for most of United customers the choice of convenience over morality won’t result in a event such as the puppy’s death. Tragedies like this don’t affect us, and so while we might feel anger towards the company in the moment, we forget about them, and live our lives as though the incidents never happened.
United isn’t the only place where the easier access, cheaper costs, or even brand popularity override the morality of using a service or purchasing from a company. In 2013 Lululemon’s founder stepped down after making sexist comments about women’s bodies. As if that weren’t enough, the company’s CEO resigned a month ago for creating a toxic environment in the workplace, according to a Forbes article. The company clearly has a discriminatory history, and yet just about every girl at this school owns a pair of Lululemon leggings, and the company is still well on its way to earning its goal of a $4 billion revenue. Similar issues have occurred in companies like Uber and Abercrombie & Fitch.
When choosing which airline to fly, what clothing to wear, or what company to give your money to for any purpose, do your research. Showing your political views through marching or participating in the lie-in is all well and good, but we need to start expressing our beliefs in more ways than that. Frequent companies that are careless with their passengers or discriminate in the workplace and you are allowing the company to continue to perpetuate those ideas, giving other companies the idea that they can get away with doing the same thing. Hold businesses to the standard that you would want in your own workplace or in your customer experience, and maybe soon the workplace will be safer and companies will be profitable because they are considerate, not because we don’t care enough about the problems of others to make financial decisions that reflect our morals.
