Last week’s dramatic “I Quit” moment with JetBlue Flight Attendant Steven Slater has understandably sparked a lot of debate on a variety of topics. To date I’ve seen the story discussed in the context of workplace anger, dreams of quitting in style, airline rage, what’s wrong with air travel and much more.

It’s human nature that pretty much everyone has the quitting fantasy at some point in their career. While this takes many forms, from winning the lottery to the “take this job and…” format, all of it is totally normal to a point. The problem comes when it moves from the fantasy stage to something one would seriously consider acting on.

Having employees with emotions that close to the surface is a definite problem for HR. Sure, you may have quirky personalities in every group, but you need to look at your workforce as a whole and figure out if you have more employees this close to snapping than would be considered normal. All of this makes a compelling case for measuring employee engagement levels, and working to improve them on an ongoing basis. As an HR pro, if you don’t have a good indicator of employee satisfaction, you need to work on getting a clear picture sooner rather than later. Can you imagine the internal discussions this week between JetBlue’s management, HR and communications? It’s a communications nightmare, and there might be a concern that more flight attendants are going to take a cue from Slater. One is a dramatic incident; a string of similar “I can’t take it anymore” turnover indicates a major problem with corporate culture. An employee satisfaction survey might not be the full answer to this type of problem but some of the findings can help discern a pattern that needs attention and ultimately action.

Interestingly enough, several HR bloggers have written quite a bit about the problems with air travel in the last couple months, including this post from China Gorman, where she discusses an incident (not dissimilar t to Slater’s) where a passenger crossed a line. She makes some great points about how the flight attendants clearly had little focus on customer service, and very likely, problems with their corporate culture.

Steve Boese, when blogging about Slater, makes a good point about how organizations need to consider how their actions can cause employees to quit in protest. Who really knows how many times Slater had been told off by a passenger in the last six months? So while I’m a huge believer in the importance of outstanding customer service, as an organization, the airline should also be backing up their employees. Passengers should not be able act in an aggressive manner or harass flight attendants, especially when you consider the impact on the customer service experience of the rest of the passengers. Too many times when I have been traveling on a personal or professional basis, I’ve longed for the flight attendant to put a passenger in their place, especially having been hit in the head more than once with obnoxious traveller’s luggage being pulled out of the overhead bin. The lesson in this is that while customer service is a priority, it should not be at the expense of employees (or other passengers) time and time again. Part of the corporate culture and employment brand needs to be about trusting employees to do the right thing, and backing them up where appropriate. That in and of itself may create more employee loyalty and higher levels of customer service.

A final thing I think HR can take from this incident is that there’s value in ensuring employee satisfaction proactively, an ongoing basis. Engagement reviews or “stay interview” processes help to address situations like this before they blow up. As does coaching between managers and employees where they can build a trusted relationship and safe place to discuss these types of issues. A once a year process where the employee gets to discuss issues or concerns, is simply not sufficient, and usually too late.

I’m sure as an HR pro, you’ve had your own Steven Slater story to some degree, but there’s a lot that can be done to manage performance and minimize workplace drama. Building a strong culture centered on both respect and high performance will go a long way towards preventing employees from pulling the emergency slide