We're All JetBlue Attendants Now

Shift to a service economy has left us ticked off
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 13, 2010 8:16 AM CDT
We're All JetBlue Attendants Now
Steven Slater did what millions of exasperated Americans long to, Noonan writes.   (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)

America has become a country of harassed JetBlue attendants longing to pull the emergency chute and tell everybody to go to hell, writes Peggy Noonan. Steven Slater's story has struck a chord with the public because the shift to a service economy combined with a decline in manners has left everybody interacting with each other too much ... and seriously annoying one another, Noonan writes at the Wall Street Journal.

"'I pay them to be rude to me' is kind of an anthem of the service economy," Noonan writes, recounting encounters with a "Dead Face" TSA agent, an invasive bank worker, a surly hospital receptionist. "In a service economy in the age of no manners, everyone gets on everyone's nerves," she concludes. "Everyone wishes they could take the chute. Everyone understands someone who did." (More Peggy Noonan stories.)

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