Oh yeah! Says who? - Your Life - travel industry workers surveyed on job stress and passenger behavior - Brief Article

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2004

Stressful travel conditions, a general decline in values, and parents who fail to control their children are sore spots for Americans on the move, reveals a joint survey by Public Agenda and the online travel site Travelocity.

Some 65% of passengers say rudeness is a serious problem and 52% of travelers claim a lack of courtesy is a major source of stress. Meanwhile, 54% of travel employees indicate passenger rudeness is a top cause of their on-the-job stress and tension. Nearly half (49%) of workers personally have seen a situation where disrespectful behavior threatened to escalate into physical confrontation. An additional 19% say incivility led to a dispute actually getting physical.

Moreover, 62% of travel personnel report they sometimes or often see their fellow workers being rude, and another 50% admit that they have lost patience and been impolite to travelers themselves. When this happens, however, 56% maintain it typically is because employees were provoked and treated badly by passengers. While most customers give travel personnel high marks for overall courtesy, 67% say that when they have a run-in with discourteous travel employees, they are likely to be rude in return.