Steven Slater. Photo courtesy of his Facebook page.

The story of Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who slid down an escape chute after an angry tirade with an irate passenger, is getting public sympathy because many workers are also stressed, social worker Marina London said.

London, who was quoted in this article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, explained that in these tough economic times of job layoffs and high unemployment, employees are doing more work than they have ever done before.

London is a clinical social worker and a media representative for the Employee Assistance Professionals Association. She said employers and workers should be trained to recognize burnout in colleagues such as Slater. The situation could have been defused if a fellow worker had stepped in and asked Slater to sit down and take a break while he or she handled the upset passenger.

“I would be shocked if he had been totally quiet all of this time and not shown any signs,” London said. “Presumably if his supervisor had been trained in recognizing that this was somebody who was under a lot of pressure, they could have made a referral to an employee assistance program and he would have gotten intervention and support,”