Monday, June 7, 2010

sCrew Scheduling

They are the puppeteers that control me. One false move and I could be banished to the arctic for days...I could be sent on 4 all-nighters in a row with a bunch of vampires (that's what I call the sallow, haggard looking FAs [no, not the hot kind of vampire] who choose these flights regularly)...I might be forced to work 14.5hr days with only 'cheese food' to eat...I could be stuck working with crews who's senority numbers are in the single digits (oh please, have mercy, that one may be the worst).

Crew Scheduling.  They are programmed into my cell phone as the most heinous ringtone imaginable. When they call & I hear the death metal march reverberate, my heart palpitates...my palms instantly sweat...I lose my shit everytime.  They tell me when and where I need to be, where I will be going, when I get to come home, if I need my bathing suit or snow shoes, if I should prepare myself for the Vegas douchebags or the Orange County bitches...and if I don't follow their command or if there is any trace of attitude in my reactions, I could be 'flagged' and eveything I said above can and will happen.  I say to myself, "Just suck it up! Show no emotion. You are a machine. Someday there will be retribution!" I know no faces of whom these beings are, just omniscent voices and first names (which are probably aliases), of whom every detail of my working life is in control of. Obviously, this is for their safety...I can't stab the heel of my 2-inch pump into a face I've never seen.

I remember being on a layover wanting to hang myself from my hotel bathroom's shower rod somewhere in buttfuck, Alaska. It was the dead of winter, -29 degrees and I'm in a fucking skirt. Crew Scheduling reassigned my freezing ass from laying over in sun to snow at the last minute.  I can see them all now...sitting around the office in their Old Navy jeans behind their computers with pictures of cats as screensavers...they're cackling, laughing sinisterly at my expense, picturing my snot and tears dripping icicles as I struggle to make it from airport to hotel van without my joints snapping. So there I am, contemplating my dramatic death, but my fingers are too fucking frozen to tie the noose. But really, it was the flashing thought of Crew Scheduling, fuming and irrate for having to find a trip replacement due to my suicide, which stopped me. I couldn't allow another reserve to pay because of me. I believe there is karma even in death. So I guess Crew Scheduling saved my life...mother effer, they always win.

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