Sense of humor...

Should you have a sense of humor to work in aviation?

  • Total voters
    50
  • Poll closed .
Screaming_Emu said:
That’s when scheduling tries to get ahold of us
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CS: “hi, captain emu?”

“no, this is patrick”

IMG_0324.jpeg
 
Screaming_Emu said:
I’ve definitely found that some cultures don’t understand sarcasm. They were loading a Lamborghini on our plane in NRT and I told them to be careful with my car. The ground rep was shocked that I could bring my car to work. I’m reasonably sure that if I asked for the keys he would have gotten them for me.
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The Japanese definitely do understand sarcasm but the workers at the airport not likely to be native English speakers or spent a lot of time in an English speaking country. Being taught a language in a school is much different than living in a country. If you told the worker something similar in Japanese, he would have likely understood and found it funny.

A good example is a co-worker had a flight going into NRT with a passenger misconduct. Operations agent spoke English pretty well but had never heard the English idiom “cops” for police. In a classroom, you might not learn all the slang. In a TV show or movie, the subtitles are translated to something similar in your language.

Somewhat similarly, widebody pilots at a certain legacy when I was on a jumpseat ride were criticizing newer widebody pilots not experienced in international flying for speaking to foreign ATC using American idioms that ATC could not understand versus in standard ICAO English phraseology.
 
Flagship_dxer said:
The Japanese definitely do understand sarcasm but the workers at the airport not likely to be native English speakers or spent a lot of time in an English speaking country. Being taught a language in a school is much different than living in a country. If you told the worker something similar in Japanese, he would have likely understood and found it funny.

A good example is a co-worker had a flight going into NRT with a passenger misconduct. Operations agent spoke English pretty well but had never heard the English idiom “cops” for police. In a classroom, you might not learn all the slang. In a TV show or movie, the subtitles are translated to something similar in your language.

Somewhat similarly, widebody pilots at a certain legacy when I was on a jumpseat ride were criticizing newer widebody pilots not experienced in international flying for speaking to foreign ATC using American idioms that ATC could not understand versus in standard ICAO English phraseology.
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No, those Japanese workers should've knew English at a native and level and should've understood Screaming_Emu's humor.
 
Flagship_dxer said:
Humour over ACARS is something you need to be careful with. If the person on the other side is not someone you know, you might end up in a meeting with HR or your manager. ACARS messages are viewable by a wide range of people and are part of every accident investigation. Not everyone is going to get your jokes and it could come across as lacking in professionalism.

As dispatchers, workload is always something that we want addressed and kept at a manageable level. If you are send too many non pertinent messages over ACARS, you dont look very busy. It sends a message to pilots that we are not very busy. When you are having multiple flights diverting, the last thing you want are more messages piling on top from crew just wanting to chat.

Pilots have and probably will again in the future report dispatchers to the Feds for not responding to non-pertinent messages when busy. Pilots overall do not understand how many flights dispatchers are dealing with or how busy it can get on a dispatch desk.

I was jumpseating back to work one time and the dispatcher sent quite a few messages trying to be funny. The crews response to me was that if dispatchers have that much free time then we should all be sending messages like this.
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ACK
 
Flagship_dxer said:
Humour over ACARS is something you need to be careful with. If the person on the other side is not someone you know, you might end up in a meeting with HR or your manager. ACARS messages are viewable by a wide range of people and are part of every accident investigation. Not everyone is going to get your jokes and it could come across as lacking in professionalism.

As dispatchers, workload is always something that we want addressed and kept at a manageable level. If you are send too many non pertinent messages over ACARS, you dont look very busy. It sends a message to pilots that we are not very busy. When you are having multiple flights diverting, the last thing you want are more messages piling on top from crew just wanting to chat.

Pilots have and probably will again in the future report dispatchers to the Feds for not responding to non-pertinent messages when busy. Pilots overall do not understand how many flights dispatchers are dealing with or how busy it can get on a dispatch desk.

I was jumpseating back to work one time and the dispatcher sent quite a few messages trying to be funny. The crews response to me was that if dispatchers have that much free time then we should all be sending messages like this.
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I would always try to inject some dry humor or sarcasm into some of my ACARS messages and if they got it they got it, if they didn’t, then I at least relayed some information to them in a sarcastic way that they could find humor in.

Crew: “Why do we have to go all the way to Canada to EWR today?”
Me: “A couple of clouds popped up over PIT and ZOB can’t work in those conditions so they’ve shut down their airspace except to those who can’t fit enough gas to go around.”

Keep in mind that yes jokes should be limited, but if you phrase it right you can joke and still convey information. Also, we have a larger keyboard so it’s a shorter amount of time for us to type something out.

*Editor’s Note: that is only an example of a flight that has a few hours to go in their flight. When crap hits the fan, humor goes out the window and it’s strictly business.
 
When I worked at another airline many many moons ago. Came in for a 4 am shift, my desk was barely up and running let alone me. Phone rings, I answer and immediately say in a straight tone, "You have reached XXX Dispatch. We are currently closed. Please call back during normal dispatch hours. If you need to leave a message, press 1.... Then I heard in the background, Hey I didn't realize dispatch closed, when do they open.

Now I had to change modes and get this persons attention. Explain what was going on and that yes we were present.

At least said person had a sense of humor, otherwise......
 
It should go without saying there’s a time and place for humor. Obviously should not be cracking jokes during irops, emergencies, diversions, etc. And keep it minimal and short. I usually wait for the crew to initiate since I don’t know the audience on the other side. I’ve even had ATC make a few light hearted jokes with me when I’ve called at times as well. We can’t be serious, soulless, robots 24/7. Humor can be important for relieving stress and sometimes building relationships in a high tension career (but yes only when appropriate).
 
MountainsOrBeach said:
It should go without saying there’s a time and place for humor. Obviously should not be cracking jokes during irops, emergencies, diversions, etc. And keep it minimal and short. I usually wait for the crew to initiate since I don’t know the audience on the other side. I’ve even had ATC make a few light hearted jokes with me when I’ve called at times as well. We can’t be serious, soulless, robots 24/7. Humor can be important for relieving stress and sometimes building relationships in a high tension career (but yes only when appropriate).
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A few weeks ago, a lady captain sent a joke over ACARS. She asks, "What's the difference between Vegas and Wuhan?" She answers, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." I too let the captains set the tone. If they're serious, I'm serious. But if they tell jokes, I know I can joke with them back.
 
MountainsOrBeach said:
It should go without saying there’s a time and place for humor. Obviously should not be cracking jokes during irops, emergencies, diversions, etc. And keep it minimal and short. I usually wait for the crew to initiate since I don’t know the audience on the other side. I’ve even had ATC make a few light hearted jokes with me when I’ve called at times as well. We can’t be serious, soulless, robots 24/7. Humor can be important for relieving stress and sometimes building relationships in a high tension career (but yes only when appropriate).
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I got stuck in a money line in MIA a few years back and went below min fuel. Couldn’t get out if said money line without getting to the end if the runway. Told the dispatcher of our plight by telling them that we were still “number eleventy billion in line.” They said that if we were eleventy billion minus one, we probably would be ok, but since we aren’t we probably should head back.

This job is similar to anything else, you gotta read the room and keep it work appropriate. Those who are constantly worried about getting in trouble probably just aren’t good at knowing what is work appropriate.
 
Screaming_Emu said:
We do a lot of planed redispatch. There's one dispatcher who "acknowledges your acknowledgment of redispatch." I once "acknowledged your acknowledgement of our acknowledgement." He wrote back and said sorry. I told him that I've got nothing else to do and can keep going all day.
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Pretty sure I took a flight over from a dispatcher that wrote that exact message.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I joke around a lot with my crews and they've always been cool either over acars or phone. The captains love the fo jokes XD
 
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