What Robert Isom’s Latest Airline Tirade Tells Us About the Lost Art of Curbing Humanity
Well, folks, the internet has crowned a new unhinged CEO icon, and his name is Robert Isom. This week, a leaked audio clip from an internal American Airlines town hall has gone stratospheric, where the CEO apparently told employees that if a passenger “doesn’t want to be treated like a sardine, they can buy two seats or stay home.” Cue the collective groan of economy-class trauma. The irony? We’re all in on the joke—we’ve been paying extra for legroom while the C-suite floors their private jets. Meme historians are now debating whether Isom has accidentally accomplished what no union could: uniting frequent fliers and gate agents under a single banner of shared misery. The real laugh is that the “lost art” he lamented might just be basic empathy, which is apparently heavier than checked baggage these days.