u/robslaca

Rumors are spreading across the bank that management was forced to hand out negative, mid-year performance reviews in preparation for firing people en masse without severance.

The root cause is that Wells Fargo cut their budget for severance and pushed down the cost burden to the lines of business. And since the LOBs don't want to foot the bill, they are looking for ways to fire people without severance. Hence, the mandated negative reviews.

I'm trying to understand the most likely outcomes and how to strategize. Quite frankly, I am thinking of just leaving. It is a cesspool of incompetence and declining morale and my manager is a busy body who is more concerned with giving the appearance of work than actually accomplishing anything useful.

Or do I stick around a bit longer to get a package? Can they legally just make up fake reasons to fire people? I figured I would crowd-source intelligence before acting. Knowledge is power!

There's been a lot of questions and confusion lately about Aer Lingus' new carry-on policies. Based on my recent experience, I have come to conclusion that Aer Lingus company leadership is profoundly incompetent and should minimize the damage by rolling back this change.

I flew recently from Dublin to another major European city on an award ticket. My booking confirmation and the trip dashboard all showed that a carry-on was included. And there's an FAQ on their website that says carry-ons are included in all award tickets.

However, when I when to check in online, their system tried to get me to pay for a carry-on, implying that if I didn't, it would be forced to pay 35 euros at the gate to check the carry-on into the hold. I actually tried to pay but the process kept failing with non-helpful error messages.

This caused me to avoid checking in online and check in at airport where the window agent said, not to worry, that the carry-on was included on an award ticket. But then she handed me a boarding pass that said: Carry-on: no.

I then asked a gate agent if I would be allowed to bring the carry-on, and she said yes and to ignore the boarding pass indicator.

However, I've read several stories on this sub about people being denied carry-ons, forced to pay and/or check in their carry-ons, coming from other European cities into Dublin.

Connecting the dots, here is my best guess on what is happening. Aer Lingus rolled out a policy change publicly before updating all their IT systems to handle it. Their IT staff probably pushed back and said, they wouldn't be ready for the change but company leadership decided to roll out the policy anyway prematurely, thus leading to chaos and confusion where their own staff at different airports don't know how to handle it.

In some cities like Dublin, staff appear to realize their IT systems are messed up and are simply not enforcing the new policy and in other cities they are implementing the new policy, only causing confusion and anger among passengers.

This all seems ridiculously incompetent at the high leadership level. Why would they go live with a policy change before they've implemented it correctly in their IT systems? This is such a high-level fuck up that I would not even blame their IT. I would blame their business leadership for authorizing this roll out without having fully implemented it correctly.

Also, perhaps, even more importantly, the concept for making people check in a carry-on is incoherent and oxymoronic and will continue to cause confusion indefinitely. I mean, if you check in the bag, it is no longer a carry-on. It is a checked bag with a 10kg limit. To continue to call it a carry on, even though it is checked, is just stupid, especially when it is so inconsistent with the way every other airline works.

At some point, I wouldn't be surprised if Aer Lingus unwinds this change, realizing will continue to cause anger and confusion among their customers.