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An article from the St. Petersburg Times Newspaper states that Southwest Airlines employees object to a man's "sexually suggestive T-shirt" on Sunday Sept. 30th. Joe Winiecki from Largo, FL boarded the plane with a T-shirt advertising a made up tackle shop with the lettering "Master Baiter".
Just before take off, Southwest personnel confronted him and forced him to either put the shirt inside-out, change his shirt, or get off the plane. He was on a flight headed back to Tampa, Florida from Columbus, Ohio and was scheduled to work the next day at Bayfront Medical Center, so he sided with the employees and changed his shirt.
But now, Southwest Airlines realized they had made a mistake and will be apologizing to Joe, according to the article in the St. Pete Times, a spokesperson for the Airlines, Chris Mainz said "It was inappropriate for our employee to approach Joe" and "We don't have a dress code. Only in extreme situations would we want to address this to our customers."
According to Steve Huettell the author of the article titled Clothes call dings Southwest- again, Winiecki had originally purchased the T-shirt while on a cruise in the St. Thomas Virgin Islands. Last month, he wore the same T-shirt on a Southwest flight, and the employees did nothing but laugh about it.
It is easily understood as to why Joe would assume his T-shirt would be accepted. If the same airline company lets it go and then a month later make a big deal about it, I would be confused too.
Huettell states Joe's words on the incident "It's really disappointing in this country when I can't travel from Ohio to Florida with the clothes on my back," Joe also mentioned "Who's to say what's offensive and what's not?"
I'm sure the airlines have rules for the dress code, but who really knows exactly what it says. Southwest as well as other airlines should work together to make a similar dress code and then make it clearer to both their employees as well as their passengers so there is no miscommunication.
The airlines should provide examples for what's right and what's wrong, clearly posted on the web for customers to see, aditionally they should make sure the employees review these examples, so these incidents don't continue to happen.
