I try to stay away from modern politics here. Try and fail more than I’d like. The reason is that I like to tell stories in a universe where we did enough right that people like to live in it.

But days like today make me shake my head. Seriously. At what moment did the people at United finally wake up and think “this might not have been a good idea?” Has it happened yet? Do they realize that they actually did something wrong, or do they still think of this as “re-accommodating” passengers?

Let me be clear here. Having a paying passenger beaten bloody and dragged unconscious off the plane is not “re-accommodating” the passenger. And it blows my mind that a sentence like that actually needs to be written down.

So it was Sunday. Everybody wanted to go home to their families or to their work. So nobody wanted to give up their seats. Even when offered 800 bucks. Fine. I understand that. 800 bucks doesn’t go as far as it used to. So what do you do? You keep upping the offer until somebody DOES accept it, or you decide that it makes more sense to get your four employees to their destination a different way.

Busting out the Police State tactics and breaking heads doesn’t make you any friends. It really doesn’t. If anyone involved in this still has a job when the fallout clears, I hope they remember that. And if they still have a job, and I hope every potential customer of United remembers that fact as well.