Hullaballoo in 3 parts

Part 1 The Petition, supporters, dissenters, idiots.

Let's start with my petition.  Before the petition was removed, we were approaching 800 legitimate signatures and that was in 4 days.   I thank you so much for all the people who signed.  Now I am asking you to sign again here.  This is also very important.  PLEASE COMPLAIN DIRECTLY TO UNITED AS WELL.

Contact United Airlines at
Tel: (877) 228-1327
customer.relations@united.com

For those who have been asking what happen to the petition.  On Wednesday night, I was attacked by a troll (or maybe more) who repeated signed the petition with stupid names.  I had decided that on Friday morning, I would close and edit the petition and send it off to United.  Well, the next morning (Thursday), I went to approve new signatures and found that my petition removed supposedly by the author.  As the author I did not approve of this.  I emailed petitiononline that they may have been hacked or spoofed.  When I did not hear from them in 24 hours, I then emailed the CEO of their parent company. I don't know if the troll had anything to do with the removal of the petition but I do know he/she/it was repeatedly signing.

Believe or not, the trolls didn't bother me as much, as I expected it.   The trolls on this blog range from hatred to stupidity.  What I didn't expect was being ignored by petitiononline.  I understand that I was was using this service for free, so I get what I pay for (which was utter crap).  I finally got a response from them on Saturday.  Apparently when I sent them the response, it did not include the URL of my petition (Despite using their form) and that if I please email them the petition id and consider giving them "a donation".   I emailed them the id, told them nicely to cram their donation.   I have yet to hear back.   And people feel up to it, please complain to their parent company.  Artifice@artifice.com. 

Part II Trolls and posters

I have a fairly laid back rule on posting to this blog.  I will delete your post if it's spam, vulgar or excessively trolling (A troll is a person who incites purely to do it).  I will keep posts that debate and disagree with my points and I keep nasty comments.   I need people to see how fat people are treated.

Part III Comfortable flying and why United sucks.
Some of the biggest complainers I get are from people who are forced to sit next a fat person on their trip.  No one (Except the airline industry) wants anyone fat or thin to have an uncomfortable flight.  In fact in my book I encourage people who do not fit in the seat to contact the airline to try to arrange to be next to an empty seat and if they can afford it upgrade to first or business class.   Deregulation and a poor way of business means that United need cram as many people as possible into a plane in order for that flight to make profit.   In the end, United may charge fat people double but it won't save their business from either being bailed out or go belly up.   If United was a company that really cared about their customers and not the bottom line, they would make it their priority that all their passengers are relatively comfortable.

Comments

[Kionba]

If one orders a large or heavy package one can expect to pay more for shipping/handling. If a person is large and it requires more space to accommodate him or her why shouldn't the extra costs be pinned on the source of the extra cost?

[Sarah]

Kionba, a person is not a package.

[Sarah]

"I need people to see how fat people are treated."

Fat people already know how they are treated, and it's a shame they have to put up with that kind of abuse at a fat acceptance blog.

Most other people either 1) agree with the abuse or 2) don't care.

[Kiona]

Yes, but we are in fact referring to a company that provides a specific service, a service where the comfort/expectations of all passengers should ideally be met to remain a successful business. Since we are talking about about seating of multiple people in close quarters, comfort can be easily intruded upon, for example by people that are too large to fit into a single seat. As a student of nutrition, a customer service employee, and a person of healthy weight/size, I feel that i have a reasonable point of view. Perhaps if we were discussing the services a therapist might provide to those seeking emotional wellbeing in regards to their excessive size, then it may be more appropriate to use the term "a person is not a package" but in the case of airlines, a person really is a package.

What is a shame is that this ring of fat acceptance blogs encourages the idea that obesity is acceptable and unavoidable when in fact, obesity of the magnitude which is seen today has been witnessed at no other point in human history. Instead, it seems to me that it could be more productive to promote ideas of healthy thoughtful living, which would in turn physiologically promote emotional stability and well being. It is also a shame that there seems to be a consistent lack of mentioning the long term affects of widespread obesity on the entire population. These affects include increased infertility, decreased productivity, depression and yes, sad but true, there is a proven negative correlation between obesity and intelligence. Of course, this affects not only those that are enduring these terrible repercussions, but also the friends, families and coworkers of. Also cliche, but true, the masses of obese people are indirectly harming the environment. The return of processed foods and pharmaceuticals into the environment are tremendous. I will spare you to even get into the effects of commercial meat farming-and before I hear there are fat vegetarians, the majority are not, and yes, commercial farming is used mostly for cheap, cost efficient food i.e. junk food. Although obesity is doing wonders for our consumer based economy with the mass consumption of processed and packaged food as well as the diet/weight loss companies of many varieties and the pharmaceutical companies that provide medications to treat the myriad of obesity induced conditions that are undoubtedly a cornerstone of our economy...in the long run, should this epidemic continue, I hate to think what would become of this country.