ed An executive's case

April is the cruelest month, and especially so for POSCO, one of the best and most celebrated corporations in Korea.

The company, selected as the world’s most competitive steelmaker for the past four years, suffered when a major fire broke out at one of its state-of-the-art blast furnaces. “That’s nothing compared with the damage on our corporate image inflicted by the latest resignation of an executive after an airplane brawl,” said a POSCO official.

The officials was referring to the former senior vice president of POSCO Energy, who allegedly slapped a female flight attendant of Korean Air on the face with a magazine for what he saw as her poor service, specifically the salty, half-cooked ramen, or instant noodles, she set before him.

The consequent outpour of media criticism and attacks from Internet warriors here against the businessman and POSCO ― “which elevated such an ill-mannered man to so high a post” ― led to his fall.

It would be easy to join the netizens in rebuking or lampooning the executive as a man who blew up his lifelong career and remaining financial benefits because of his momentary impatience and/or immature personality. What could be more disgraceful than ending 30 years of successful corporate life by bickering over an in-flight snack?

We, and most others for that matter, have yet to hear both sides’ of the story. Yet one cannot completely rule out the chance the executive was in a particularly awful mood or bad shape for some reason on that fateful day, and the flight attendant was a more self-assertive type by the standards of the Korean, and Asian, airline industry.

The executive might have never intended it but somehow served as a lesson for others, not only self-important corporate directors but any consumers of service, that there are certain manners to be kept in dealing with people engaged in “emotional labor,” which include caddies on golf links, sales clerks at department stores and numerous telemarketers.

There are other lessons here up for grab: the increasingly ferocious ― and often dangerous ― power of SNS; the air travel industry’s excessive competition leading to their employees’ undue, near servile, services; and deepening doubt about the validity of the service industry’s time-honored slogan of “The customer is always king.”

More businesses will reportedly consider personality when putting employees on executive boards. A better solution may be to take out part of their ruthless profit-seeking and fill it with humane management.