Flight Attendant Fired For Middle Finger Picture That Went Viral

A flight attendant has been fired she gave the middle finger to passengers in the cabin, snapped a picture of the gesture and uploaded it to the internet.

Tatiana Kozlenko, a Russian flight attendant with Aeroflot airline, uploaded the image to Russia’s Facebook clone, Vkontakte. As those things tend to do, her expression of anger went viral. From Vkontakte it was uploaded to Twitter, where it got dozens of shares within hours of being posted.

The trouble for the flight attendant came when word got around to her superiors, the Telegraph reported. The flight attendant was called into a meeting and fired for her middle finger picture.

Appropriately enough, Aeroflat chose Twitter to address the scandal.

“Posting this photo shows Tatiana’s attitude towards passengers and her duties,” the company posted. “She acknowledged her fault when she spoke to her managers.”

Initial reports seemed to disagree with this side of the story, The Huffington Post reported.

“The hand isn’t mine, the plane is not my company’s!!!” the flight attendant posted.

It does appear that the gesture wasn’t made recently. Russia’s news agency RIA Novosti noted that the image was originally posted in October 2011 and only recently went viral when a Russian blogger tweeted it.

The flight attendant fired for her finger picture is in good company with others punished for careless posting. Shortly after the 2012 election, a 22-year-old Cold Stone Creamery employee posted a racist rant about Barack Obama on Facebook. After a media firestorm, the company decided to fire the employee and her threats were investigated by the Secret Service.