Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass has accused a United Airlines flight attendant of ordering his 22-week pregnant wife to “get on her hands and knees” to clean popcorn off the airplane floor during a recent flight.
Bass took to Twitter to blast the airline over its treatment of his wife while she was flying without her husband but with their two small children in tow.
The flight attendant had been handing out the popcorn as an inflight snack, and Bass’ youngest daughter ended up spilling some of the popcorn onto the floor. At this point, the flight attendant allegedly told his wife that she would have to clean up the mess.
The incident happened on Monday, prompting Bass to tweet: “The flight attendant @united just made my 22 week pregnant wife traveling with a 5 year old and 2 year old get on her hands and knees to pick up the popcorn mess by my youngest daughter. Are you kidding me?!?!”.
Bass included a photo of the seating area, which showed a small amount of popcorn that had landed on the floor.
The tweet quickly gained traction and Bass ended up being bombarded with messages which ranged from supportive to blaming his parenting skills for the mess that his child had made.
Officially, however, United appears to have taken the side of the Bass family, and in a followup tweet, the star pitcher said the airline had promised to take up the matter privately with the flight attendant involved.
United Airlines did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
CREW INSIDER
It might be unsightly, but it’s hardly surprising that a small child given a bag of popcorn might spill some on the floor. Perhaps in an ideal world, the child’s parents might clean up after them, but in reality, this very rarely happens.
By many standards, the Bass family didn’t make that much mess at all and I’ve seen far worse… especially during the Summer holidays. At least there wasn’t chocolate (or worse) smudged into the carpet and seats!
Of course, depending on the airline, mess left by small children can be a real pain for the flight attendants. Not all airlines employ cleaning contractors, and, if this was a United regional jet, the flight attendants could have been the ones left vacuuming remnants of popcorn off the airplane floor.
Does this make it acceptable to order the parent to do the cleaning? In my opinion, no!
Matt
Not sure if the flight attendant even knew his wife was pregnant.
Also he never said the flight attendant said the words “on your hands and knees”. Only that in order to clean the mess one may have to get on one’s hands and knees. But of course god forbid a celebrity’s wife is asked to clean up a mess her own child made.
Maybe he should negotiate child-care into his next multi-million contract.
I don’t know “anyone” child or adult that can eat popcorn without dropping some on the floor!! I would never expect to pick up anything on an airplane floor. Hopefully they’d have a broom or something to do this in between each flight. A paying passenger should never be expected to do maid service on top of paying for your ticket!!!!
Why is a 2 year old eating popcorn? That’s a choking hazard.
There are a lot of people on Twitter that didn’t bother to read the article. The father wasn’t on the plane so don’t pick on him about allowing his wife to be ordered to pick up their child’s mess. A cleaning crew comes through even before all the passengers have deplaned. I wouldn’t have picked it up either and I have never heard a fa tell someone to pick up after their kid.