The queues outside Dublin Airport's Terminal 2 on May 29th, when about 1,400 people missed their flights. Photograph: Alan BetsonCustomers — how dare they? Showing up too late for things, showing up too early, showing up at all.
But rather than lap up our gratitude and bask in the glow of our joy, some companies and organisations seem intent on making us angry and even shifting the blame for their mistakes onto us. It’s a bold strategy, as the meme goes, let’s see if it pays off for them. And still it took UEFA almost a week to muster up the will to apologise for the “frightening and distressing events” spectators had experienced or witnessed, while accusations made by two French ministers of fake ticket fraud on a “massive, industrial scale” have yet to be either substantiated or retracted.
Outgoing DAA chief executive Dalton “Platinum Services” Philips might have been contrite when he appeared before the Oireachtas transport committee, but his contrition was drowned out by concurrent headlines about planned “holding pens” for would-be passengers who have the temerity to show up “too” early — an entirely rational response to the DAA’s disarray.
Yes, exceptional circumstances applied at the height of the pandemic and can be said to still apply now. Nobody has ever navigated a pandemic recovery before. And yet business chiefs must have realised that one was coming at some point. Under-resourcing might be an economy-wide constraint, but that barely absolves highly remunerated managers who flunk the “you had one job” test.French riot police observe Liverpool fans at the Champions League final.