/ Editor / 26 October 2007 / Leave a comment

"PULL UP, I am on tilt!!" In between monitoring the skys and bringing planes in to land, Atlanta Air Traffic Controllers play poker.

HOW do you unwind at work? Cigarette? Lunch time livener in the pub? Emailing your friends and then going onto Facebook to find new friends to email? Banging your head against a wall?

Or do you play poker? Does your office have a card room, like the one at the Atlanta air-traffic control centre in the US?

All power to the Federal Aviation Administration's decision to spruce up the workplace. The FAA and the controllers' union have been locked in a long and contentious contract dispute. Poker would ease tensions.

Atlanta-based FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen tells us the FAA ordered a break room table for $335 and chairs for $460. The table had a reversible top. It was plain on one side and had a "game-board" painted on the other side.

Calvin Phillips, the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers Association chapter president for Atlanta Centre, says the FAA chose the most expensive table, at £3,500.

The FAA says not. Victor Santore, vice president of the NATCA's southern region, says the table episode indicates the FAA went "on an end-of-year spending spree. I think what happened is they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar and they quickly returned it."

Says Bergen: "We're just going to cancel the order and just a plain briefing table with no game boards painted on top.

Might be best to cancel the table, and just play online.

Back to work...

Tags: Air Traffic control, Poker