Some non-trivial number of you readers traveled by air over the holiday season.
And many of you flew Southwest.
Which became such a disaster, it begat its own meme.
The summary of the matter was this: Southwest airlines has refused, for years, to invest in adequate technology to handle growing demands.
On a call with employees Monday, Southwest Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson explained that the company’s outdated scheduling software quickly became the main culprit of the cancellations once the storm cleared, according to a transcript of the call that was obtained by CNN from an aviation source.
The extreme cold, ice and snow grounded planes and left some crew members stranded, so Southwest’s crew schedulers worked furiously to put a new schedule together, matching available crew with aircraft that were ready to fly. But the Federal Aviation Administration strictly regulates when flight crews can work, complicating Southwest’s scheduling efforts.
Southwest ended up with planes that were ready to take off with available crew, but the company’s scheduling software wasn’t able to match them quickly and accurately, Watterson added.
“The process of matching up those crew members with the aircraft could not be handled by our technology,” Watterson said.
“As a result, we had to ask our crew schedulers to do this manually, and it’s extraordinarily difficult,” he said. “That is a tedious, long process.”
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/27/business/southwest-airlines-service-meltdown/index.html
Here’s another snippet from the article.
The problems Southwest faces have been brewing for a long time, said Captain Casey Murray, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association.
“We’ve been having these issues for the past 20 months,” he told CNN. “We’ve seen these sorts of meltdowns occur on a much more regular basis and it really just has to do with outdated processes and outdated IT.”
The lack of investment cost Southwest nearly $1B in revenue over a stretch of several days. And there’s no telling 1) how much revenue these issues have lost in the past, nor 2) how many consumers were left with such a distaste that they won’t fly Southwest for a long time.
All of this is costing Southwest a ton of money: reasonably much more than $1B.
In our minds this is a great example of what happens when you do nothing.
And if there’s an industry that loves to do nothing, it’s the retail industry.
We remember someone telling us something very apropos.
Restauranteurs and retailers are the worst kinds of patients a doctor could get.
Doctor: So that pain in your arm that brought you in? You have stage 4 cancer. We need to treat that arm immediately.
Retailer: Yeaaaaaa, but that’s going to cost money, soooo…
Doctor: Cost money?! You don’t understand the severity here: if you don’t treat the arm, and soon, you’re going to lose it. And that’s a best case. This will spread quickly. Your other arm, legs, then your head. This is an investment in your life.
Retailer: Perfect, I’ll come back when I get around to it.
Doctor: Come back when you get around to it?! You’re going to be dead, man!
Retailer: Nah. If there’s anything I’ve learned in being a super awesome – and let’s just be honest, a genius – businessman, it’s that I know more than everyone. Fuck you, doc.
Retailer dies the next week.
Story not believable?
That’s because you’re as bad as the retailer.
Retailers seem to fundamentally lack the self-awareness necessary to weigh the cost of inaction.
For example: it was alarming to see how few restaurants could actually handle online ordering when the pandemic hit.
Like, look at Dominos: the company that has outperformed all competitors for years doesn’t even do anything crazy. They just do basic stuff, but because their competitors are so incompetent, they win.
Imagine being the kid in your village who gets the date with the pretty girl just because you wipe your ass a little bit.
Not full blown wiping contact, removing all the greasy gobs, but just, you know, you grabbed a wad of leaves and let it graze your asshole.
Once in a while.
So you just smell a little less like shit than the other kids who find it completely normal to just defecate all over the backs of their legs.
Southwest has since committed to investing (not spending, investing: the mindset is critical here) $1B in IT to resolve these problems.
Retailers, meanwhile, are happily walking around with clumps of shit stuck to their asses.
Don’t be that retailer.
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