A breath of fresh air and management enlightenment has just blown through the halls of WHQ.  Effective immediately, United's current Ridiculous Cell Phone Policy has been changed.  From now on, flight attendants will be allowed to use cell phones, pagers, and beepers "while walking through the terminal."

All other terms of this policy will stay the same; Flight attendants in uniform will not be permitted to use cellular telephones, beepers or pagers at any time while on the aircraft or in briefings, nor will they be permitted to wear cellular telephones, beepers or pagers on their uniforms---which looks stupid anyway.

We now have a down-to-earth policy that I believe is certainly fair to our employee group and should be professionally accepted by all of us.  That previous nonsense about not using a pager/cell phone while walking through the terminal vs. standing in the gate area was just plain overkill.  As we mentioned in our previous story, it was a perfect example of how a department manager can take a good idea for a reasonable company employee policy and go way too far.  I would like to think that person was removed for at least six months from any future decision making authority concerning our employee workforce.

Regardless, congratulations to whoever helped to revise this policy.  I think that a simple thanks would be the professional thing to do here.  If you think this is a good policy change, let Onboard Service know by sending them a short email.  It probably wouldn't hurt to send a thanks to AFA also, as I'm sure they had considerable influence in this matter.