Man Denied First Class Seat on United - Dressed in track suit

GAITHERSBURG, Md. - A corporate executive with electronic retail giant Best Buy says a United Airlines gate agent denied him a seat in the first class cabin because he was wearing a track suit.

<snip>

Alvarez said the gate agent called his name and when he walked up to the counter for his upgrade, the agent said he was dressed too casually for first class.

"I was humiliated and embarrassed," Alvarez said.

The Best Buy vice president who lives in Gaithersburg, sent e-mails to United Airlines Customer Service Department and the airline's board of directors. Alvarez said he hasn't received a response several days later.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/man-kicked-out-of-first...

He *should* be humiliated - being seen in public in a track suit. Oh, and way to represent the company, genius.

Those track suits are pretty ghastly.

That said, I've flown first class in steel-toed boots and ripped jeans and a t-shirt...but I was Platinum level (Delta) at the time.

Good.

Damned right.

Would he wear a track suit to the movies? Or out to dinner? How about to his next company meeting?

Fucking nimrod.

If you want to dress like you are taking the bus, TAKE THE FUCKING BUS!

Call me old fashioned, but I very clearly remember the days when no self respecting gentleman would dare think of getting on an airplane dressed in anything but a suit and tie, particularly someone who was an executive with a well known firm.

For the record, I've flown scores of times over the last twenty years and the worst dressed I ever showed up for a flight was in dress slacks and a golf shirt. For the majority of those times I flew, I worked as a truck driver.

It's unfortunate that Americans have lost so much of their sense of decorum.

Take some Geritol.

He ought to sue the jack-offs.

What do you think gave me the strength to type out that post?

That and a new pack of Lucky's and a cold beer.


Now GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN, YOU USELESS WHIPPERSNAPPER!

Keep em' guessing

Got another beer ?

Grandpa: What the... what the hell is this?
John: That's lite beer.
Grandpa: Gee, I weigh ninety goddamn pounds, and you bring me this sloppin' foam?
John: Ariel's got me on a diet because the doc said my cholestorol's a little too high.
Grandpa: Well let me tell you something now, Johnny. Last Thursday, I turned 95 years old. And I never exercised a day in my life. Every morning, I wake up, and I smoke a cigarette. And then I eat five strips of bacon. And for lunch, I eat a bacon sandwich. And for a midday snack?
John: Bacon.
Grandpa: Bacon! A whole damn plate! And I usually drink my dinner. Now according to all of them flat-belly experts, I should've took a dirt nap like thirty years ago. But each year comes and goes, and I'm still here. Ha! And they keep dyin'. You know? Sometimes I wonder if God forgot about me. Just goes to show you, huh?
John: What?
Grandpa: Huh?
John: Goes to show you what?
Grandpa: Well it just goes... what the hell are you talkin' about?
John: Well you said you drink beer, you eat bacon and you smoke cigarettes, and you outlive most of the experts.
Grandpa: Yeah?
John: I thought maybe there was a moral.
Grandpa: No, there ain't no moral. I just like that story. That's all. Like that story.

advice.

oh I'm sure he wouldn't and I'm sure push come to shove, he *could*.

wrong place

But still... superficiality sucks, no matter who's defending it or why IMO.

Nothing is less appetizing to me than to have some guy sitting nearby in a restaurant with his sweaty armpit hair sticking out from his underarms because he's wearing a tank top or something of that nature.

YUCK!

Of course, there are so many who find that attractive and appetizing, I guess I'm just being picky. Those same people also love finding hair in their food, too.

I am 31 years old and wear suits everyday to work, and at least a sports coat when doing my weekend/nightlife thing. My friends use to rib on me for this, but they have gotten to used to my style. Some of them have even adjusted their own wardrobes to a bit like mine, since I get much female attention.

and this female attention thing, are they laughing?

But I stopped chasing the under 25 crowd a long time ago. I found that women my age like my "well put together" look.

as your suit. VP at Best Buy? What are the odds?

Some people would rather dress for comfort on a long flight, especially when they're sandwiched in like sardines.

I wasn't aware there was a dress code in first class. Alaska Airlines doesn't seem to care if I'm in big t-shirt, leggings and running shoes, or jeans and a sweater.

and old folks dressed up at the rest areas on I95. It was like the time Ethyl told Lucy that she had NEVER worn "my blue jeans on the subway".

Decorum = elitist baggage from another era

Explanation would be wasted...

I can't believe I'm basically defending a Best Buy executive, but I can't believe the elitism on this thread. And it certainly harkens back to the 'good old days' when minorities and the poor were kept 'in their place'...

There is so much that "harkens back to the good old days" on DU it borders on the tedious. The god damned good old days never existed, OK?

If my expressing my personal opinion that dressing appropriately for a certain circumstance is "elitism" then I suppose I need to get my average daily post count back down to 2.5 where it belongs.

Give me a fucking break.

My response had NOTHING to do with the "poor" being "kept 'in their place'"

Now about this dressing "appropriately" for First Class on an overcrowded United cattle car.

Curious how you might define that without resorting to other equally ambiguous terms, and without sinking up to your neck in stinking elitism.

you think that I might be "sinking up to my neck in stinking elitism" because I hold the opinion that traveling on an airplane while wearing clothes more appropriate to jogging through the park and then being denied an upgrade to first class because of it is something for which I am unsympathetic.

Well...sorry, once again.

Watch the video on the page linked in the OP.

Fuck that guy.

I don't begrudge him having the frequent flyer miles to get the upgrade.
I don't begrudge him making the kind of living that affords him a huge house in the suburbs.
I just don't feel bad for him because a gate agent turned him down on his upgrade because he was dressed like he was ready for a run around the track at Gaithersburg High School.

Fuck him sideways.

They won't even come out of their corporate cave to issue a statement.

You didn't define "appropriate", but I didn't really expect you to. You might have come up with terms like "social norms" and "respectable", which is saying the way you look offends me, which is exactly the reason Negroes rode at the back of the plane.

So you can either look the other way, re-examine your values, find some tolerance - or you can get upset that someone doesn't look the way you want them to. Kinda silly, isn't it?

UNNNNHHHHH...

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHEEEERRRRRRRAAARRRGHHHH

HMMMMMMUUUUNNNNNNNNNNEEEERRRRMMMMMMM.


Nope.

Still don't feel sorry for the guy.

Definition of "Appropriate" when it comes to dressing while traveling on an airplane;

Such that it looks as if you put just a little more thought into it than you do when you either go jogging or to bed.

Take the fucking curlers out of your hair, put on a clean shirt and some big boy pants and don't bitch about your lot in life, particularly when you are an executive of a Fortune 500 company taking the same short-ass flight you take every god damned week.

If the guy doesn't like it, Montgomery County Airpark is right up the road from Gaithersburg. He can buy himself a Cessna 172 for probably 1/2 of his annual salary and get to Connecticut faster than driving all the way to Dulles and using a commercial airline. Hell, in that case, he can fly naked.


OK?

He doesn't care what you think - and that hurts, doesn't it? There there...

If you actually want to believe I give two shits what that guy thinks, have at it.

Point - MISSED! Well done wtmusic!

You think he is entitled to wear whatever he wants when he travels. Guess what? So do I.

I just can not feel sorry for him because he was denied his upgrade by a gate agent who probably makes less a year than our poor, humiliated executive makes in two months.

I gladly cheer the decision made by the agent.

Screw that whiny asshole. Put on some big boy pants and get on with it.

In every post you've mentioned his wealth. Shouldn't really have anything to do with it, should it?

Could there be some envy at work here?

You've got me figured out.

I envy his money. That's my entire point. The fact that he is a forty-something whining asshole with a crappy sense of style who didn't get his upgrade because he was dressed like he was on the way to PE class has nothing to do with it.

I'm so ashamed.

I think I'll go bite the head off a knight.

Nothing to be ashamed of, it's pretty common. A good therapist can help.

Therapist?

That's what DU is for, ain't it?

Why would I need to pay for a professional when I have the likes of you to tell me how wrong my thinking is?

Thank you so very much for setting me straight.

I really and truly feel I have grown immeasurably during this exchange.

Into what, is still up for debate.

had an allegory and I just thought of it.

Your insistence that other people dress the way you want them to is just like fundies' insistence that marriage be between a man and a woman.

In essence, getting bugged by the way someone else acts or looks, even though it really has no effect on your life at all.

Don't you think that sums it up?

I was busy not giving a fuck anymore.

Be good!

You be good too.

Seriously

The only dress code is that your private parts are covered.

Can't believe the elitism on this thread.

I've flown firstclass plenty of times. Last time I wore beat-up sweat pants and my oversized Eagles Sweatshirt. Oh and was traveling from my vacation in Costa Rica to Denver for a meeting with with pharmaceutical lobbyists I use to do computer support for.

Go ahead and judge me - show your elitism.

What you deem "appropriate" is not necessarily what others would deem "appropriate."

I would want to dress comfortably, no matter in which class I was seated. As long as you wouldn't get arrested on the street for what you're wearing, it should be okay.

I mean, I like to see well dressed people as much as the next person, but when I saw young people attending a formal (Catholic) wedding in cutoffs and sandals (ten years ago), my expectations of any kind of "appropriate" attire went away.

There were some bad things in the past of course. However when people dress better, their manners tend to be better. Any school teacher could tell you that.

Americans have become slovenly. Go to Europe, say, Italy or Greece. Americans stick out because they dress badly.

I call bullshit.

Poster "Cal Carpenter" wrote;

"And it certainly harkens back to the 'good old days' when minorities and the poor were kept 'in their place'..."

Which I take to mean that if I feel it is appropriate to dress a certain way when flying, my point of view in this regard is tantamount to wanting go back to the days when certain classes of people were "kept in their place".

Bullshit.

This thread is interesting as hell. If you haven't yet, go watch the video on the page linked in the OP. The man in question lives in a VERY nice house in Gaithersburg, Maryland. A VERY well-to-do town in Montgomery County, MD., a suburb of Washington DC.

He is the perfect example of the "corporate elite" that so many DU'rs love to hate, yet my suggesting that the dude ought to dress and act like a business man on an airplane and that he got what he deserved when he tried to get an upgrade has ruffled a bunch of feathers here.

I'll rag on the corporate elite because of how their greed negatively effects others. I'll mock them when the policies they support and help to enact infringe on the rights of others. You shouldn't be surprised that people are pissed when a man's rights are infringed because of the clothes he wears, regardless of how wealthy he is. If there is a dress code for first class, it should be clearly posted. What that employee did was stupid and indefensible. For you to defend it because of rules of decorum is stupid as well, grandpa.

to get the hell offa my lawn.

Sonny.

Whooooooooooooooooooo!!!! Screw authority!!! Perhaps the definition of heretic has changed over the past 80 years.

Naaah, I think I'm following the definition rather well.

her⋅e⋅tic
  /n. ˈhɛrɪtɪk; adj. ˈhɛrɪtɪk, həˈrɛtɪk/ Show IPA
From the Greek "Hairetikos" - "To Choose"
–noun
1. a professed believer who maintains religious opinions contrary to those accepted by his or her church or rejects doctrines prescribed by that church.
2. Roman Catholic Church. a baptized Roman Catholic who willfully and persistently rejects any article of faith.
3. anyone who does not conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle.

This thread has been fun, I'll admit. And it has been fun watching and reading the responses to my simple, and what was once a widely held, point of view. I've been repeatedly called an "elitist" because I don't feel one should dress as if they have just come from or are on their way to the gym when traveling on an airplane. So be it. If you and all the others could actually sit down with me over a beer, I am quite sure you would find me anything BUT an elitist. But I digress.

Again, I'm sorry if my opinion on this issue has put people off. As I indicated in a post above, I was raised by parents who would not allow us kids to travel without looking "nice". I understand why they did it and I still feel, long after I have moved out of their shadow, the same way. So you can blame my mom (alive and kicking and will be 81 in January) and my dad (who passed away in 2000 at the age of 75, FWIW) for my perspective. I understand that many on this thread and in the general population at large do not hold to that opinion, and I am fine with that, truly.

But as I said in other posts, I just can not muster any sympathy for this man, as hard as I try, and unless the gate agent acted in a way directly contrary to his company's policies on the matter, I see no fault with his actions.

BTW, Thanks for the donuts! I was going to re-sod anyway.

I don't see outrage against the airline as being the norm. I'm guessing most republicans applaud the decision. Your position would only be heretical when compared to the majority opinion on DU.

And I really don't have any sympathy for this man either. I'm upset, but not upset for him. He's filthy rich I'm sure, there are far many other people more worthy of my sympathy. I'm upset about this because if this can happen to Mr. Bigwig, it sure as hell can happy to a lowly tech like me. I have no problem with people taking pride in how they look, but when crap like this becomes institutionalized, that's pretty sick.

especially if you were a woman or minority. But they sure dressed good!

Jesus christ on a trailer hitch, I am SO very thankful I can where what I want when I want (even on a plane) rather than the straitjackets people used to have to wear (hats! corsets! Shudder)

"However when people dress better, their manners tend to be better."

Riiiiight, because none of the people who fucked this economy into absolute ruin via their own sense of entitlement and greed were wearing ties or expensive tailored suits.

Oh, wait...

-app

require one to get dressed up for? Not like he was going to a VP-level meeting. He was getting on a flight (nor does the article mention whether it was a business or holiday trip). I dress comfortably for the airport.

if they had a first class ticket???

was before they started slamming everyone into the plane like a can of tightly packed sardines. They used to provide drinks and meals, now we have to pay for them.

They don't respect us, so why should we dress nicely to respect them?

the man wanted to be COMFORTABLE! i see nothing wrong with that. now that airline tickets are so cheap that the "unwashed masses" can fly - and they do - all bets are off on flying attire.

7 replies to a single post!

Wow. Seems I touched a nerve.

I love it!

Shit folks, dress any way you care to. I really don't give a damn. I just expressed an opinion. You're free to think I'm out of line. It's really OK with me. I prefer to dress in a fashion I deem as "appropriate" for the circumstances. Blame my mom and dad for bringing me up that way, OK?

Funny how some members on this board react to certain things and not at all to others. However, I suppose I'm just as guilty of that as anyone.

Cheers!

Not that people don't have a right to be offended.

I wouldn't want to wear anything on a plane that would cause discomfort, or not want to appear as if I've slept in it when I arrive. Because that's my objective on any flight longer than an hour -- to go to sleep! It's not a cruise with a night club, restaurant, water slide, and climbing wall on board. It's a feed lot, without the food.

As far as first class goes, what are you paying for? Some fashion nazi to tell you to shape up?

--imm

The only thing a suit and tie gets you at an airport is a longer wait disrobing and redressing at the security checkpoint. The smart people are wearing tank tops, gym shorts and flip flops so that the Homeland Security Colonoscopy will go faster.

to GET THE HELL OFFA MY LAWN!
God damned kids.
Ain't got the sense god gave a goose.

Look...look at what you made me do.

I spilled my beer and dropped my Lucky Strike into the puddle.


Fuck.

I guess I just dont rate the worth of people by the clothes they wear.

You might not rate their worth (though doubtful), but you certainly rate them. Everyone does. It's human nature.

and no, I dont rate people by the clothes they wear. Im an adult now.

and by the 70's the concept of "play" clothes in the was stuff that was worn out enough to wear outside when you're playing.

but after that, exercise and sports wear became nice clothes and sometimes expensive and covered your body just as well as anything else. (though spandex covers some people more pleasingly than others)

I have flown first class - and business class too - in sweats...the only comfortable way to fly, imho.

What a bunch of uptight assholes!

and that means jeans and sneakers. I used dress better but after I had a kid spill their pop on me (turbulence, it was an accident, the mother was needlessly embarrassed and apologetic) I decided comfy and washable was the only way to go.

United was wrong - unless they have posted a dress code for First Class and even then that would be iffy.

this is fucking insane.

and I completely agree.

when we do the Nice to Amsterdam flight many of us wear shirts with cannabis leaves on them, and look like a bunch of hippies. I pay good money to fly across the Atlantic to come back home and I wear COMFORTABLE clothes. A track suit is fine for being in public. It should be fine for being in a plane, on a train, or whatever. I cannot imagine someone being hassled for being in first class in one of these things on our TGV trains here in Frnace. Hell I wore a jean jacket last time.

And I travel in first class (company pays). I've never had this problem. Insanity.

It's a nice one, dark, heavy wood and polished brass. You'd approve.

You can wear fucking shorts in first class but you can't wear something like this?

<>

Back in the day people used to wear business suits to fly in any class. Now people wear stuff that is just a step above pajamas.

he was wearing. Isn't that interesting. It's always a good idea to go to the original source.