The world can be an unkind place and one little girl got a taste of this when her name was openly mocked by a gate agent at John Wayne International Airport. Five-year-old ‘Abcde,’ pronounced “Ab-city,” was catching a flight to El Paso, Texas along with her mother Traci Redford when the incident occurred.
Redford explained in an interview with ABC7 that Abcde suffers from epilepsy and the pair had gone to the gate for priority boarding when the gate agent began to mock the girl, “The gate agent started laughing, pointing at me and my daughter, talking to other employees. So I turned around and said, ‘Hey if I can hear you, my daughter can hear you, so I’d appreciate if you’d just stop,” she recounted. Despite the confrontation, a photo of her daughter’s boarding pass with her name ended up on social media.
An incensed Redford filed a formal complaint with the airline. The company responded two weeks later with disciplinary action against the mocker and a formal apology to the family: “We take great pride in extending our Southwest Hospitality to all of our Customers, which includes living by the Golden Rule and treating every individual with respect, in person or online.”
Well, Southwest Airlines might treat people with respect online, but the rest of the internet wasn’t as sympathetic to the situation. Scroll down below to see how people online took ‘name-shaming’ to the next level.
Mother Traci Redford called out a Southwest Airlines employee for openly mocking her daughter Abcde
“She said ‘Mum, why is she laughing at my name?’ And I said not everyone is nice and not everyone is going to be nice and it’s unfortunate.”
“While I was sitting there, she took a picture of my boarding pass and chose to post it on social media, mocking my daughter. It was actually brought to my attention by somebody who had seen it on Facebook and reported it to Southwest Airlines.”
“The gate agent started laughing, pointing at me and my daughter, talking to other employees. So I turned around and said, ‘Hey if I can hear you, my daughter can hear you, so I’d appreciate if you’d just stop'”
For the internet, Redford’s media statement turned into an invitation for more mocking
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