Bitter Victories

 

INC.: What about the people at the terminal, the ticket checkers?

BURR: You don't want to do that kind of work for more than three or four hours a day. It's dog work. It's demanding, stinko work. You want young, vibrant, aggressive student-types, who are physically very strong and can stand behind the counter on their legs for 3 or 4 hours a day. You don't want competent full-time people doing that 8 or 10 hours a day. It's exhausting and boring.

INC.: Is this something you're going to subcontract as well?

BURR: No, we'll hire the students.

INC.: Will they be regular People Express employees?

BURR: No, they will be part-time college students. We will try and select the very finest ones that we can find, and we will tell them that after a 9-or 10-year education program, we may hire them full-time at People Express. Not all of them; they all probably won't be good enough. But we'll tell them that they'll certainly have a shot at it. If we get them when they're seniors, and they're real good, maybe we'll have them work for us for a year or two full-time before we send them off for MBAs. With that type of person, [training] might be as short as four years. And in that way, we'll get some really good people coming down the pike.

INC.: What is it you are looking for in an employee?

BURR: We look for all the ordinary things that everybody else looks for. I guess the one area where I think we've had some success is in looking for service-oriented people, people who are a little more likely than the average person to go out of their way to help you out.

INC.: How do you try to find that in people?

BURR: I'm not an expert, but the test we use screens them, not for that quality, but against its obverse, which is your antisocial, negative, cynical, downbeat character. That type of person isn't normally prone to be overly helpful to other people.

INC.: Do you try to screen out certain kinds of pilots, because of possible union tendencies?

BURR: No, we never did attempt to do that. If a guy walked in the door and said, "I love unions; I'm going to work hard to get one here," we would have screened him out. But nobody walks into an airline talking like that, especially now. They all come in saying, "I wouldn't join a union if you paid me." So I don't know how to screen for that. It's our view, though, that the negative, cynical guy, which the test does screen for, is more likely to want the protection of a union.

INC.: Let me ask you another question. Do you ever think that maybe you're faced with a difficult choice here? You want the company to slow down, consolidate. But are you the best person to oversee that process? You seem to get excited only when talking about the future. On the other hand, if you leave . . . well, the human-resource policy is your vision, and without you to sustain it, how long will it last?

BURR: Well, I never thought of it quite that way. That's a nice formulation. I'm reasonably well convinced that the place really does need to take a breather.But I hadn't thought that I might not be interested in sitting around nursemaiding it. That had not occurred to me. But I'm the one who slowed it down, not the board, not Wall Street. I'm the one who said, "Hey, look, let's sell a couple planes, let's slow down and tidy the place up a little bit." That's my direction, and I'm doing it because I really believe it needs to be slowed down. On the other hand, having come through the fear and trembling of February, when we were losing our ass, and having straightened it out, it's remarkable how quickly I've begun to think that mybe we could speed it back up again. Lately I have been kind of wondering a little bit if we couldn't shorten that period of time so that we could move a little more rapidly. The TWA thing sitting over there, that's a pretty unique property which we could probably find a way to do something with. On the other hand, the older you get, the less willing you are to set off across the river. When I was a little kid, there was nothing I feared about setting across a river. You'd take any kind of risk to get to the other side. Didn't matter. But now, when I think about taking on the kinds of risks to go do whatever, I think more about them now.

INC.: One of the things that strikes me, just walking around this place, is how tangible the signs of your accomplishments are. I mean, you just look out your window, and there they are, every day, big planes that are dramatic, physical reminders of what you guys have been able to accomplish. You can look out your window in either direction and you can see your customers, you can see them consuming your product. You can see them getting on the airplanes. I mean, this whole thing, sitting at your desk, must give you an enormous sense of satisfaction.

BURR: You know, I actually don't get to look out the windows that often. It seems as if we're always holding a meeting of some sort in here, and I get stuck in the chair with its back to the window. Everybody else gets the good views. They get to look out and see the planes taking off, and I just don't get to see that much. In fact, one of the things I'm enjoying about talking to you right now is that I'm sitting here in a seat with a view and I get a chance to look at it all.

INC.: But doesn't it give you an extraordinary sense of achievement, a thrill?

BURR: You know, it used to. When the first planes were delivered here, three whole planes, now that was a thrill. Watching the first People Express flight ever take off; that was something. Now when I look out there, I don't know, there are just so damn many planes out there. It's just not the same anymore.

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