Toughen up, Gen-Y

In a perfect world, we bosses would never shout. We would never lose our tempers, snap, growl or yell. So Kevin Rudd should not have lost it on the plane earlier this year when he didn’t get served the right meal.

But gee. It’s a bit much when a raised voice and a good telling off leads to front page news, outraged plane staff, a weeping flight attendant and a public apology.

Especially when the lecture seems to have been justified. How hard is it to get the Prime Minister’s meal right? In fact one would think that on a government plane he would be the main priority. Surely the thinking would be: “Hey, the Prime Minister of Australia is on this plane. He’s pretty important and we are here to look after him.”

Is it that hard to get that right?

I feel sympathy for Rudd – for once. When one has a busy schedule it is very hard to monitor what you eat and so easy to put on weight and risk your health.

And I also feel sorry he got landed with the weepy Gen-Y flight attendant who had so little resilience she crumbles under an outburst and now has the whole nation feeling sorry for her.

In a perfect world, the flight attendant would have copped it and told everyone up the line “well, we stuffed that up. What can we learn from it?”

In a perfect world, Rudd would not have lost it. But then it’s never a perfect world for bosses or workers.