An airport director turned ‘work from home’ into a no show job. They’ve been fired, and an investigation finds that they even failed to return phone calls when Southwest Airlines was looking to add service the airport.
The 2023 investigation found that former Madison, Wisconsin airport director turned “work from home” into “not working at all.” And coming out of Covid, with travel recovering, this was costly.
Credit: Madison, Wisconsin Airport
Reportedly, the director was generally unreachable. Getting any response from her routinely took weeks. Staff described an environment that featured “lack of communication, time management, vision, and organization,” while all projects met resistance when they met anything at all. The director defends work from home suggesting the role was predominantly one involving documents from pending legislation to industry news (presumably her defense is she was busy doom scrolling blogs).
Colleagues were especially incensed that while the airport director never came into the airport, she banned those under her from telework even though county policies allowed it (‘when productivity wasn’t compromised’). She’s accused of protecting employees with a personal relationship from discipline, and concocting job descriptions to steer selection to a crony, and the investigation found misrepresentations from her about the hiring process.
One employee, whose wife was a friend of Jones, allegedly called airport passengers racial slurs, showed a dirty hypodermic needle to a passenger and falsely accused coworkers of stealing his wallet, according to documents. Another employee — whom investigators said was a friend of Jones, often giving the airport director quail eggs, coffee and preserves — threatened to bring a gun to work but was not disciplined.
Her inaccessibility allegedly cost the airport potential service from Southwest Airlines.
- When a major airline calls a regional airport, you answer even though most of the time they’re just box-checking.
- The major determinant of air service is going to be commercial potential of a route
- Subsidies can make a difference
- But you want a reputation for being easy to work with, to make the care about service potential, and to articulate any incentives that are available.
I love this,
Jones told the State Journal she had no recollection of not responding to the airline.
I suspect that if Southwest were genuinely interested in serving the airport, they would have pursued follow-ups aggressively. At the time this would have occurred, though, the airline was expanding aggressively into new markets so perhaps there is some chance that this is true. More recently they’ve indicated unwillingness to open new stations as they pull back from growth.
The airport’s director was set to retire in April, and a nationwide search for a new airport director is underway. So she wasn’t permitted to keep her $228,000 salary through the end of her anticipated tenure.
(HT: Enilria)
Yeah so this is why high-end professional service industries such as biglaw are so prestigious, lucrative, and respected in high society.
In big law as an associate, or frankly even as a partner, you respond. Immediately. All the time. The matter might require research and thinking but at the very least you say you’re on it.
Profiles of successful big law partners routinely say they are never not at work. I read a profile of a guy who seemed to be a massive a-hole, but the article said he has been interrupted at Sunday dinner every night for the past 30 years by a client call. The guy ordinarily worked 6:30 am to 10 pm seven days a week.
That’s what we all need to strive for if we want to be members of a high-end respectable productive society. Not responding to work calls and emails, such as this airport director, is the epitome of low class.
Here is the section from ABA Journal.
Now compare and contrast that with the airport director.
@Dick
For once, I appreciate your perspective here; though, I’m not sure that ‘work-life balance’ is one everyone should strive for. Many of those ‘big law’ types do burn out, or literally ‘die at their desk’ from heart-attack. Others do prioritize clients over all else, which is admirable, for the clients, but for those attorneys’ families and friends, it’s often a form of abandonment. It’s all about priorities.
I’d imagine an airport director is a complicated, potentially high-stress role, if done well, that absolutely should be in-person.
That said, there are many ‘jobs’ that do not require in-person work, and that can be done, and done well, from anywhere, using existing technology. Sure, some abuse that privilege, ‘no-show’ is not acceptable and should be shunned.
A paywall didn’t allow the link to the original article to go through but searching other sources indicated that Kim Jones is retiring instead of being fired. There was no indication about the retiring being voluntary or involuntary.
Go Big Red!
I’m thinking , Thief by Conversion charges would be appropriate and seizure of property acquired from the funds. At least make her lawyer up….
@bill ganas
I admire your ‘passion’ but that is a novel application of that law—I’m not a lawyer in Wisconsin, but this seems like an employment dispute, a civil matter, if anything—besides any claims that Southwest or airport customers may have against her personally is too attenuated. Like, good luck finding a prosecutor who is going to waste limited resources on a case like this. Then again, the way our country is going, if they can make her or anyone into a ‘culture war’ issue, then perhaps there could be a ‘witch hunt’—call the kangaroo court to order!
@Dick
I thought of something else for you—since you’re all uppity on ‘hard work’ and the so-called ‘meritocracy’—have you thought about our US Congress persons, who earn $174,000/year, have excellent healthcare and other benefits, and get access to insider information and regularly trade on it, earning large fortunes (both sides, sadly, and you probably hold an irrational animus towards Speaker Pelosi, who is one of the most notorious, so there’s some ‘red meat’ for you—for the rest, think of Senators Perdue, Loeffler). Would you say those folks (many of whom are lawyers) work ‘harder’ than say a so-called ‘low class’ (your words) bus driver or waiter earning minimum wage and maybe tips? Then again, it seems the Emperor doesn’t really need a State Duma, does he, so maybe they’ll disband Congress soon enough. Think critically here with me if you will.
How the hell can you be an airport director/manager and work from home? The entire purpose of being a “site manager” is managing the site, which you can’t do from your bedroom dressed in your jammies.
I’ll bet one could find thousands of stories like this in government at all levels. We’re so used to mediocrity, ignorance, overspending and disinterest that nobody much cares any more. With the dew regime in DC, perhaps things might improve.
@jns55
You think this *new regime is going to fix corruption and ‘waste’? I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Listen, I wish they would—both sides—but what’s really happening is that we, the people, in the US at least, just handed over all power to the tech-bro oligarchs. These guys only care about themselves—and we are not in ‘the club.’ This usually doesn’t go well for most of us. Hope I am wrong.