But it was this situation that made me think, “Ok…maybe that’s his own dumb fault for not walking up to someone and showing him or her his broken guitar.” He mentions in his post that the employees all avoided him like the plague, and I can see that being the case at 12:30 a.m. in a relatively empty airport.

But still…did it really go down like that?

Here’s a question I have – What kind of outrage would United have caused if they’d revealed their whole side of the story (even as it were happening) through social media? If they were sharing the details of this guy who had sent them dozens of emails over his “broken guitar?” I’m guessing there’d have been some pretty strong blog posts and tweets against United about how poorly the “United idiot on Twitter” handled the situation.

With the way social media allows us to handle these sitautions, are we basically taking a David vs. Goliath situation and leaving Goliath completely unarmed to fight any assault David can muster against him? That doesn’t quite seem fair to me.

Finally, I’ll finish my novel of a comment with this thought: Until I have a bad experience with United, will this really affect me? Sure I’ve read his story and watched his video, but if I want to fly to Los Angeles and Delta’s ticket is $40 cheaper than Northwest’s, I won’t be thinking about Dave’s story, I’ll be thinking about locking down that cheaper ticket. Sure, this situation points out a mistake they might have made, but I doubt it will affect my final decision when it comes down to ticket-buying crunch time.

Until they break my laptop or something by tossing it around. Then I’m writing a rap song about it and going off hardcore gangsta style on ‘em.

Good post, Scott.