I hate flight attendants.



Phun-ee

I worked with this schmuck last week...the dude who vomits bad jokes and nothing else. He acted like Jim Carey but looked like an even fuglier Vince Vaughn. I had to work with him for 3 days. Halfway through Day 1, I wanted to strangle him with a seatbelt extension and lock him in the closet (the latter has actually happened between flight attendants but that's for another time). Anyways, here's why I hate him...

Upon deplaning, he said to every passenger, "dick here" in such a way that he could pass it off as "take care" should anyone really listen. And if that wasn't bad enough he added "schlong now" instead of the usually schticky "so long now". And I had to stand right next to him with no place to go. I found myself speaking unnaturally loud to cover up my embarrassment with "BYE!!! THANK YOU!!! GOODNIGHT!"

He worked the first class cabin and stood in front of all 16 of 'em (on every leg mind you...) and said, "So like is anyone from out-of-town?"  I now suffer from a wandering, lazy eye because I rolled them so far back in annoyance.

He made the demo announcements and introduced me to the entire plane as "The Infamous Tina" which provoked about a gagillion questions and lots of "slut of the skies" type looks throughout a 7 hour flight.

When the pilots call to communicate with us in cabin from the flightdeck, we're required to state our name and location when we answer. So naturally he answered the phone with, "This is Dick in the rear."

And with that, I strapped my parachute on, and buh bye. I was done.

Boarding Music

I have it out for someone.

The "DJ" who creates the boarding music mix tape we are supposed to play when we herd the cattle into my office aeroplane.

The last 3 tapes have all included Justin Beiber bubblegum blah, and most recently there was a B.o.B. POS thrown in there. It's been creating an environment of even more awkwardness with observations of weird jaw thrusts, neck bobs, and shoulder shrugs.  Must be the Beiber Fever? (sorry, had to) Don't even get me started with the holiday mix....No, they can't put Mariah Carey's, 'All I Want for Christmas' on it but The Chipmunks Christmas, yup, peppered ALL up in there.  Why torture me even more during the boarding process? I'm already not getting paid during it (betcha didn't know that fact) and it's by far THE MOST frustrating part of the job.  At least allow me to drown out the, "I don't know where Row 20 is! HELP AHHH!" (Um, really? No, it's not near Row 6, nope not Row 15 either...try behind Row 19, but in front of Row 21? Maybe? Just try, humor me, I know you don't believe me but I've been trained) with something that makes me not want to kill bunnies. Yes, please have mercy and let me drown out the waah waahs of banality with something like perhaps the musical stylings of Miley Cyrus's, 'Party in the U.S.A' /Hanson's, 'MMMBop'/ and/or anything from the Jock Jams collections I,II,III, or XXXVIII, or even any song on the 'Space Jam' soundtrack will suffice.

I guarantee beatz like these would make the boarding process schizophrenically faster. And they're sweet jamz. I will find this DJ and make the appropriate suggestions for new musak. You're welcome.

The Best Part of My Job is When I'm Not Working



So I haven't posted in a few weeks...why? Because I haven't worked.  It was a conscious choice to take a conservative month off (last year I took 7), probably prompted by the crazy peanut lady debacle during my last flight (see 'Warm Nuts' post, October) .  Thus, the job material I've had lately has only been in my night terrors that often involve trying to prepare the cabin for departure yet every single passenger is still on their cell phone despite my intimidation...even the lap children and service animals.



No, I don't have a sugar mama or daddy to subsidize my lifestyle and finance such a lengthy time off...but I'd rather be poor than insane so I take these extended breaks as often as I can...and even when I can't, I can. I used a week of this time to travel to Reykjavík, Iceland. It was my second time there, my first being a 3-day stop-over a little over a year ago during a 3-week European tryst...It's now decidely one of my most favorite places in the world. I traveled with another flight attendant this time which is so much easier than traveling with you common folk.  We paid only $170 round-trip, less than $50/night in a 4-star hotel, and easily manuevered our schedules all because we are in this niche of an industry.  We know what to do and say to the flight attendants with other carriers to get free ugrades and drinks, and we had a fucking fantastic time. This is why I do what I do. This is why I accept the measely pay rate, incessant bullshit, and brain damage due to non-use...because I use the benefits in which this job was designed. I work to not work, to experience the world, not just my own. It's a common statement we flight attendants make, we say our intentions in signing up for this lifestyle was a short-term one, we'd live the glamorous life for 2-5 years and move on to a "real" job...everyone I know who has quit has regretted that decision like Kenny Roger's facelift.

But it's back to reality, back to the grind, 24-hour Cabo San Lucas layover with a dear FA friend of mine this weekend.  Sadly, my vacation is over. I hope I can still remember how to demo the use of the seatbelts...Is it push or pull? Arrgh, I can never remember...

Icelandair offers a non-stop service to Reykjavik from Seattle.

Warm nuts?

So I had this passenger. She was gross. She somehow sat in my first class cabin, traveling with her elderly father. I think she belonged in the belly with the animals. I was warned of them by another flight attendant who had them on a previous leg earlier in the day.  They must've been from Appalachia or maybe Utah and here's why...

1. Her drink of choice was red wine mixed with ginger ale over ice. Who does that?

2. She pointedly asked for ice in her father's water...but then when I brought it to him, he said he didn't want ice. I look to her for confirmation but she blames the mistake on her poor, senile dad.  She proceeds to request that I remove each ice cube with a spoon.  I said, "I'll get right on that but it may take me forever."

3. She crawls over her father as she is seated at the window to use the lavatory. I hear her whine, "This is ridiculous!"... Her issue was in the amount of space in her row. We all know that the real issue is with the space she took up. She was sure it was tighter than the row in front of her. I said "No it isn't ma'am. It's all standard and you're in first class which is the roomiest of all. Feel free to measure the row in front of you and get back to me."

4.  She comes out of the bathroom and asks me where the BIGGER bathrooms are on the plane. She was totally serious. And how did I respond?
     "HHHHHAHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahahahHAHHHHAHAAAhahahahahahahahaHA!!!"

5. And this is my favorite part.  I serve her a ramekin of warm, mixed nuts about an hour out from landing. She freaks and says she can't have them as she is allergic to peanuts.  I tell her there are no peanuts in the mix so she's safe. She looks at me. She looks at me for a long time. Maybe 5-hour long seconds-ish. Something like that. I break the silence by pointing to each type of nut and I name them very slowly for her....cashew........walnut........almond. See? No peanuts. She says, "So you're saying those aren't peanuts??" ......Ummmmmm nope, they most certainly are not I assure her.  In my head I'm thinking, "Is this conversation seriously happening right now?".  I ask if it's an allergy to all nuts...she says, "No. Peanuts." I'm so confused by the idiocracy of this moron and now other passengers are watching this exchange and listening in on my nut classification lesson. So I say, "Ma'am okay, ALL peanuts are nuts......BUT all nuts are NOT peanuts, make sense?" She looks even more doofus-eyed (probably shouldn't have used an SAT type analogy on this winner) and thus, I retired as a teacher right then and there and said "You know what? Nevermind...."....and just fucking took the damn peanuts out of her sight.

If she was sitting in coach class, I would've understood.

Jumpseat Therapy

The flight attendant jumpseat.  It's the pull-down, ass-flattening, back-breaking "seat" we're required to sit on for take-offs and landings...and it's the most uncomfortable thing my bootay has ever had to meet.  You passengers think you're uncomfortable? There is no reclining for us, no resting of the arms, and the worst part, besides the fact that they are so close to the lavatories that I can smell and hear business being done, yes, the worst part is that I have to share my seat with another, sometimes rather portly FA with no option to switch, even if I wanted to...and most of the time, I really, like really want to. It can be incredibly awkward...or absolutely fascinating.

I think the jumpseat possesses superpowers.  Or more like, spewerpowers. You sit a flight attendant on that thing, and they spew out shit like the BP oil spill. I'm telling you, personal, personal 'I'm trying not to judge you but I totally am' kinda shit. I bet if you Googled "TMI", flight attendants are somewhere in the search results. We joke that it's 'free therapy' and it probably happens because there is safety in anonymity...in knowing that if I'm told you're cheating on your husband with a baggage handler in Dallas or the inner details of your struggles with Irritable Bowel Syndrome on the airplane, I won't give a fuck and I probably won't see you again for a couple of months or even years even if I did give a fuck. So verbal diarrhea ensues a lot on the J/S...I admit to it. Yeah, I've leaked some personal information (still kicking myself for telling blabbermouth Barb how I have all of Hanson's albums on my iPod currently) out of boredom to an almost complete stranger. When you're stuck and there's no one else to talk to but eachother, when you're tired of bitching about the flight at hand and company matters, have eaten all the left-overs, & have read and re-read all the newspapers and magazines we hoard, we tend to spill out our deepest, darkest secrets.  I know some shit ya'll...yes I do, and I think I'm decently good at keeping secrets, but get me on that J/S, and man, I'll tell you all that shit...that I know.

 'MmmBop ba duba dop, ba du bop........'

A Croc of Shit.

It's happened.  I flew with a flight attendant who wore Crocs for her inflight shoes. I know! Gross! My eyeballs almost bugged completely out of their sockets when they drifted to the horrors engulfing her feet.  Thankfully no charms for added flair but she may as well have pinned a Hello Kitty or two to them they were so distracting.  And I thought Danskos were bad enough...you know who you are ladies.

So I thought she'd change into her appropriate "concourse" mandatory heels after deplaning our flight like most of us do...it's how we fake the little glamour we have left. To my embarrassment, she didn't. She walked all over the airport in those flippers with me by her side. I tried to drift behind her but she slowed to meet my strut with her clunk. It was like that recurring nightmare when you're running as fast as you can but the scenery stays the same. I felt like all eyes were upon us...judging her footwear and subsequently me by association.  And then I realized where we were, the airport where it's now sadly acceptable to wear pajamas and wife-beaters as travel wear.  I realized quickly that those eyes were not upon her to judge, but because they probably wanted a pair. 

Eye Vomit

Fashion is mostly dead in my airline world. What happened to caring about what you put on your body and feet? It's all a blur of 3/$10 souvenir T-shirts, logo blasts, tattoo prints, tapered jeans and khakis, embroidery and bedazzlement. And I've learned to handle these monstrosities but I won't put up with Crocs. No, dammit I will not! I'm putting my pumps down on that one.

A Compliment?

Today, a burly sort of fisherman stopped me in the aisle as I was trying to solicit credit card applications while knowing nothing about them....and said this to me...after about 4 Jack Daniels on the rocks.

Man:  I gotta ask...how long?
Me:   1 hour
Man: No no, how long have you been doing this?
Me:   4 looooong years.
Man: Really?
Me:  Oh yes.
Man: You're doing a great job (pats me lovingly yet creepy on the arm)...You're gonna make a great family member.

I awkwardly "ha ha ho ha" as I sneak away dodging the chunkos spilling out into the aisle, slowing my retreat while simultaneously avoiding eye contact with everyone else so that they can't fault me if I don't know they need anything, until I get to the back galley and think to myself....what? I am a family member...to many....I think I knew what he meant but that's a new one...I usually get, "How old do you have to be to do what you do?" assuming a compliment to my rare youth in contrast to all the blue-hairs in my industry family that I have to pretend to identify with.

I love my family.