Pushiness

[ReserveTank]

Sometimes it seems like people (boss, pushy customer, boss-pleasing dispatcher, etc.) are trying their best to get you killed or get you in trouble. Every day I see fellow pilots give in. They fudge a 16 hour day down to 14 on paper. They fly into IMC with instruments that should be repaired. They fly tired, hungry, and I have even seen pilots fly sick.
What happens is that a precedent is set and the bar is lowered. When I am approached to perform a flight that clearly exceeds some legal or safe limitation, of course I am expected to accept.
I have a way of dealing with it which is just politely declining the flight for very concrete reasons. If it is a safety concern such as fatigue then I like to discuss the benefits of not having a dead tired pilot flying living people around. Sometimes it doesn't get through though, as if I were only out to make trouble.
I'm curious to know what some of you do to deal with pushiness.

[trey kule]

I dont know if this will help because there are so many different situations, and different personalities it is hard to generalize..

I dont try to reason or argue with pushy people....at first......
Just say no can do the flight because..........................end of story.
If pushy pants takes it further do not try to defend yourself...attack so to speak....
for example...

:let me see ,, the wx is below company minimums and I will be over 17 hours duty time if we fly as planned....Are you going to accept the responsabilty for pushing me into that situation, or are you going to run and hide saying ...well, it was the Captain;s decision"

if it still goes further..again, dont argure...a simple..."piss off, I have to wrtie this up so you wont be trying to do this to other people" usually completely ends it.

The key here is dont feel the need to defend yourself. Pushers will try and put you in that position.
And dont argue about your reasons. This is a big problem for new pilots to just keep their mouths shut. I fyou must say something, put it back on the pusher...."I understood the autopilot is U/s,, is that correct...yes or no?"


Now , having said all that, things become a bit muddier when a captain refuses, for example, a departure because he has looked at the GFA and the weather may just be bad at his destination though the TAF and Metars say it will be just fine.. Or not watn to depart because a 10kt crosswind is above their "personal" minimums...

As to snagging things..I used to get in trouble all the time for doing that...I would just tell them if they did not like it they had choices..Fix it....or simply white out my snag and hope no one notices after the accident...Most people you are dealing with are not consciously trying to get you killed. They are just not able to consider the consequences and always able to fall back on the 'it was the Captains decision' Which is a good point..Never forget that...it is YOUR decision as Captain, and you will be held responsable for it regardless of whether you percieved you were under any pressure or not

Now quite wasting time reading on here and get some rest so you cant claim fatigue ..

[black hole]

The scary thing is that when you decline the trip for whatever the reason they will find some junior guy that will jump at the chance to make brownie points----?

BH

[GRK]

A good friend of mine once said to a pushy manager who called him a P*ssy for not going over duty regs..."F*ck Off...no one ever died from flying a desk!" He kept his job, and the pencil jockey was fired! True story!

[flatface]

Deleted

[Nark]

Keep in mind, he is not only pushing you, he is probably pushing everyone, at work, at home and socially. This type of sociopath seems to migrate to positions of authority and is quite successful because it is their natural environment. It is your job to not tolerate it.

Not the case, only the exception.

However you are correct. Document, clarify and know who to contact. It's amazing how voice tones change once on a recorded line, or you enter into the conversation, "Hello Mr Pushy, this is Nark, and I have Mr FAA (TC) with me, I wanted to clarify something with you."

Gentlemen and ladies: Learn that saying no to someone isn't the end of the world, nor your career. As Cat say's, it is truly a hard thing to learn.

[Cat Driver]

Gentlemen and ladies: Learn that saying no to someone isn't the end of the world, nor your career. As Cat say's, it is truly a hard thing to learn.

One has to accept the fact that at some time in your career you will be in a position where you must make a decision to accept loss of employment if you refuse to cross two lines.

Line one is contravention of law ( Aeronautics Act // CAR's )

Line two is your own personal limits both health wise and ability wise, and also such issues as risk of weather and wind limits you feel are beyond your personal skills to deal with.

I lost a few jobs by refusing to accept flights that beyond any doubt crossed the first line and on occasion refused flights that crossed line two.

Loss of employment was short term pain for long term gain in each case.

It is highly unlikely that any decent company would refuse you employment based on nothing else but your loss of former employment because you refused to fly for just cause.

The industry is such that generally good employers do know who the bad employers are.

Remember that when explaining your position about why you lost your last job that you just stick to facts and let the new employer decide if they want to hire you based of your past working and flying record..

[Shiny Side Up]

The toughest of the bunch to deal with is pushy customer. Unlike co-workers and bosses, you don't have really any recourse against them, other than to refuse them service. This won't necessarily stop them from being pushy if you're nice enough about the refusing though. There's a "the customer is always right" notion that pervades todays interaction with customers, that has seemingly infected the world. Especially when it comes to our profession the customer is frequently not right, often fatally so.

They also have large capacity to make your life difficult, should you refuse service, it always seems the most pushy customers have a lot of time on their hands to complain about you, and the internet these days gives them a big forum.

[Beefitarian]

I'd say the problem is people with money adulterate "The customer is allways right." into...

"Look you piece of human waste. I buy and sell people like you everyday, so I'm going to be a giant asshole and you better like it. I'm powerful, you can only afford to eat because I'm so generous and am willing to be your customer. But only if you start doing what you're told."

Similar yet ever so slightly different. It used to be a promise of good service not a threat to the business person. Maybe it's morphed closer to, "The customer is allways right or else. I'm a gangsta bitch."

[Shiny Side Up]

I'd say the problem is people with money adulterate "The customer is allways right." into...

Actually, money is usually irrelevant. There's a general "me first" attitude amongst the populace which in many cases is severely repugnant. A day never goes by that a customer doesn't try to push me to dump another customer to provide them service. Safety concerns aside, I've discovered that most customers don't give a flying fart about your business - despite the fact that often they would be severely inconvinienced if you went under, or in some cases It would drastically affect their busniess as well. Me first is often a grossly myopic view of the world with an eye on immediate gratification. It didn't used to be this way, there used to be a modicum of common sense and courtesy that prevailed in most life, business transactions included. Contrary to popular belief, not all customers are going to benefit you by serving them.

[peice]

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences guys! In my short career I've encountered several situations which made me ask myself if I was dealing with professionals, both on the operational side as well as the flight deck. Usually the guys on the other end of the phone don't know the consequences if something were to happen, so pushing you to and over your limit isn't a big deal. The people giving us orders have little knowledge of regulations regarding duty times, rest periods, and weather requirements. I've also seen people "forgetting" to record going over their 14 hour duty day to fulfill operational requirements (due to poor planning of course).

Thanks again for your experiences and keep sharing!

[Cat Driver]

KISS::

Don't fly over loaded.

Don't fly aircraft with known mechanical issues that are not able to be legally deferred and are so noted in the logs..

Don't fly in weather that you or the airplane are not legal to fly in.

Don't fly when you are physically or mentally not well.

Just say no when any of the above situations occur....

KISS::

[Beefitarian]

I'd say the problem is people with money adulterate "The customer is allways right." into...

Actually, money is usually irrelevant. There's a general "me first" attitude amongst the populace which in many cases is severely repugnant.

Yeah I did word that to indicate a certain amount didn't I. Though I was going for that demographic. There are certainly many somewhat wealthy folks that are nice enough.

Thing is anyone with the spare dollars to go flying can start considering themselves the "Donald" all of a sudden. Who I'm sure is also ok at times but likes to put people in their "place" so to speak. The apprentice show is popular because he fires everyone to get to the final 4 not because he hires the last person.

[Lost Lake]

With customers, I just explain to them that I promised my wife and 2 daughters that I would not intentionally try to kill myself. Mr. Customer, just jump in, the keys are in it, or 3 shots of prime and it will start. I also tend not to stick around.

With employers, SMS!!. Just tell Mr. Pushy you just want to get confirmation from the CP, Ops mgr or owner that it is all right to break rules/laws. If upper mgmt agrees with you, no problem. If they agree to Mr. Pushy, don't give the door time to hit you in the ass on the way out. Just make sure to document everything, and send it off to TC.

I have flown for assholes, and large companies. No-one ever made me do something I didn't want to do. And you shouldn't either.

[jump154]

Reminds me of a marketing course I took recently, where the whole premise of the first few weeks was "No, the customer is not always right". End message, identify the customers who you make money out of, work hard to keep them. Dump the ones you loose money or are too much hassle (usually connected). It's your business, not theirs.

[Meatservo]

Believe it or not, there are jobs out there where this isn't a problem. The company I work for will often cancel flights due to weather before the decision even gets to me, and the odd time I have made the call myself, nobody has ever given me any grief over it. Inappropriate pressure is a problem that you need to learn to deal with, but at the same time you have to have confidence that you can find a job where you don't need to. If you are upset by the continuous need to defend yourself, have faith that if you try, you may be able to find a better job where things are reasonable. These jobs are out there.

[2550]

Im gonna get flamed for this but....there are be pilots out there who have put up with pushiness so much in the past, and gotten so accustomed to being put upon and ripped off that when one of the jobs that Beef is reffering to comes thier way they screw it up by having thier back up before anything even happens.

Good post Beef. Its a good idea to point out to young guys just starting out that not every job and interaction with managment has to be a fight.

[Meatservo]

I wouldn't "flame" you for that comment. I have felt like that in the past. I had a job once where I worked for a scheduled airline. In my first week of work there, a ticket-counter girl handed me my passenger manifest and said something like "here's your manifest, now hurry up and get them in the air". The weather wasn't particularly good and I rounded on her with righteous indignation and gave her my not-diplomatically-worded opinion on exactly who is allowed to tell whom to hurry up around here. I didn't make a friend, and although I still believe she was talking out of turn with her comment, I do believe I could have handled it better. Not every situation is an opportunity to demonstrate your authority to the groundlings, after all.

[Shiny Side Up]

Reminds me of a marketing course I took recently, where the whole premise of the first few weeks was "No, the customer is not always right". End message, identify the customers who you make money out of, work hard to keep them. Dump the ones you lose money or are too much hassle (usually connected). It's your business, not theirs.

Exactly.

[Rowdy]

Having a competitor that will push can also be a concern.. however its an easy one to deal with.. when the customer says 'well why did we book with you and wait for weather when they *points* are flying in it?' you simply say 'you just answered your own question' Most get it, those that don't, dont care, werent loyal or long term customers and arent worth the business!