Well VCQ, I do fly the line, & I recently extended - along with my flight deck partner in crime - to keep the show on the road. I'm not looking for a pat on the back, or any acknowledgment at all to be honest, as I couldn't care less. I'm mentioning it simply for the fact that, whilst I certainly don't make a habit of bending over backwards for other peoples' incompetence, I'm willing to do my bit & go "beyond the call of duty" if the circumstances warrant it.
Sometimes it does no harm at all to go the extra mile & exceed one's job description. It's not about sucking up to the boss & being a kiss-ass, "yes" man, or whatever else you want to call it. I won't hesitate to pull the pin on the basis of fatigue if I'm genuinely not up to it, & have done so on a number of occasions. Nevertheless, if I am feeling up to it, & if extending my tour of duty by fifteen minutes makes the difference between getting 178 punters to their destination vs leaving them stranded, is it really that big a deal? There needs to be a bit of give-&-take by all parties from time to time, & guys who point-blank refuse to extend by so much as one minute, purely on the basis of principle & without consideration for the big picture, are, in my opinion, juvenile. Or in other words: some people are so anal, they don't realise just how anal they are.
As for JB, whilst I haven't yet had the pleasure of meeting him around the network, those of my colleagues who have met him all agree that he is a genuine guy & all-round class act. Whilst I don't doubt that from time to time he'll make decisions that will piss people off, or that he will expect his pound of flesh from us, I am quite satisfied that as long we do the right thing by him, he'll do the right thing by us. In spite of all the power he wields, things won't magically get fixed overnight, & I readily acknowledge (as I have done so on other threads) that we still have a number of issues that need fixing. However I, for one, am considerably more "engaged" than I ever was under our previous leader.