Southwest cofounder Herb Kelleher insisted there had to be a better way: “We are sitting in a management meeting trying to figure out what to do,” he recalls, “when someone piped up and asked ‘Do we really give a damn what United thinks a ticket is?9 Isn’t it more important what we think a ticket is?’ Reflexively, we all said, ‘No, we only care what we think a ticket is.’ So then the manager says, ‘Then why don’t we just print out a single piece of paper that says ‘This is a Ticket.’”
