Flying by the Seat of My Pants: Flight Attendant Adventures on a Wing and a Prayer (9 page)

R
emember the beauty queen of my first flight? Peaches? Sadly, she didn’t last long with our company. She put in her resignation after two months. She “was not a servant,” she said, and “did not appreciate it” when people treated her like one. Nor did she think the constant up-and-down of the airplane was good for her legs.

I worked Peaches’s last flight. My position was flight attendant in charge. Some airlines call it A-line, which simply means that I was responsible for the passengers’ comfort and safety. If
a passenger got into a confrontation of any sort, I’d be the one to smooth things over.

We were in the middle of a beverage service with Peaches on one end of the beverage cart and me on the other end. She served the nine passengers near her, and I served the ones near me. Suddenly I realized that Peaches was talking to a passenger who— Well, Peaches and the man had already experienced a minor run-in.

The run-in happened as I welcomed the passengers on the aircraft. Peaches was standing next to me. A man, whom we’ll call Mr. Mean Passenger, rushed on at the last minute and got right up close to Peaches’s face. He yelled at her, “Do you know what you did to me? You ruined my day!”

Now, Peaches had never seen this man before, but it is common for customers to blame the flight attendant in front of them for the horrible flight they just had.

“I’m sure I do not know what you mean,” said Peaches.

“Your airline ruined my day! You canceled my flight, and now I’ll miss my connection—”

“Well, you know,” said Peaches, interrupting. “It hasn’t been that great of a day for me either. I am way over due for a manicure and this humidity is just ruining my hair and—”

I jumped in. “Sir, can I help you find your seat? We’re ready to go.”

The man cursed and complained the whole way back to
his row. And when he got to his seat, someone else appeared to be in it. Of course it was a full flight.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said and asked to see each man’s boarding pass. It turns out Mr. Mean Passenger was supposed to be in 28E, which was the middle seat, and Mr. Nice Passenger was seated in 28D, which was the aisle seat (and his rightful seat).

I turned to tell Mr. Mean Passenger that his seat was, in fact, the middle one. Mr. Mean Passenger started to throw a fit. “First, you mess up my whole day!” he said. “And now you want me to sit in the middle seat? Well…
you can just forget it. I’m sitting here!
” He pointed to the aisle seat that was occupied by Mr. Nice Passenger.

It was time to depart. Everyone else had boarded. Mr. Mean Passenger would not sit down, and I didn’t want to delay the flight and inconvenience all the other passengers. Even taking the time to go out and get the agent could cause us to lose our takeoff time. I simply didn’t know what to do. Then Mr. Nice Passenger spoke up. “Hey, you know, it’s no big deal. I’ll take the middle seat.”

Although I had never seen Mr. Nice Passenger before, in that moment I loved him and asked Peaches to not charge him for any extras.

Now, standing at the beverage cart, Peaches asked Mr. Mean Passenger what he wanted to drink. He answered and
then got angry with Peaches because we didn’t carry the type of beverage he wanted. Peaches said, “Sir, I would like you to know that I am a former Miss—”

I jumped in. “Peaches, perhaps Mr. Mean Passenger would like this,” and I showed him a new beverage we had just started carrying. Fortunately, that worked and Peaches moved on to get Mr. Nice Passenger, sitting in the middle, his diet beverage with a lime garnish. Only she forgot the lime. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her suddenly stab a lime and reach over Mr. Mean Passenger’s head to put the lime in Mr. Nice Passenger’s drink.

Except Peaches dropped the lime right smack on top of Mr. Mean Passenger’s head. It just fell off the stir stick. Quicker than you can say peaches or berries, I saw a disaster brewing. Peaches—who knew proper etiquette required never touching a lime with her fingers—grabbed a bunch of napkins, reached for the lime, and grabbed it good. So good, in fact, she ripped up not only the lime but the entire toupee that had been glued to Mr. Mean Passenger’s hairless head.

For a minute time stood still as Peaches looked at the bald head beneath her and the toupee in her hand. Then she simply dropped the toupee right down into the open briefcase on Mr. Mean Passenger’s lap. And turned to the next person. “Beverage? Sir? Would you like a beverage?”

There was not a sound around us as all eyes went to Mr.
Mean Passenger. Then we heard a hissing. Mr. Mean Passenger looked up at Peaches and said between clenched teeth, “I’ll have your job.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Peaches. “You see, I just noticed your name tag, and you work for my daddy’s corporation. And sir, I am quitting today, and I think my daddy would want to hear about your behavior.”

And that was the last flight Peaches ever worked.

And an amazing flight it was, too.

A
ll my company asked me to do was show up on time, be groomed, and be kind.

I couldn’t do it. It was too much pressure.

I mean, I could do some of those things, you know, some of the time. But never, it seemed, all three in conjunction with one another. Some days I could be groomed. But not on the days I was on time. And most days I could be kind. In fact, some days I could be kind to everyone I met, every minute of being with every person—and then come home and have a kindness meltdown.

This happened to my normally quiet and soft-spoken girlfriend Karen.

Karen had just finished a three-day trip, serving hundreds of people an hour for seventeen hours of flight time. As she trudged up her front steps, using every ounce of her 105 pounds to pull her thirty-six-pound suitcase to the front door of her home, all she could think about was getting herself something to eat and drink and sitting down.

Her husband, a former football linebacker, was watching television in the living room when she came in the front door. As she walked past him to the kitchen, she heard him say, “Honey, would you bring me a drink and a—”

“The rest of his question was drowned out,” she said, “by the sound of my mind snapping. I mean, it was like the kindness nerve that motivates my mouth to say nice things and my hands to do nice things just snapped.

“I imagined myself running back into the living room, fueled by some type of Post-Flight Behavior Rage. I was going to lift my husband by the shirt collar and hold him high. You know, about takeoff level, and say,
“Don’t you ever ask me again for anything that can be found on an airplane! Not a drink. Not a pillow. Not a blanket. Not even more ice. Do you understand? Nothing! Until I have debriefed. Are we clear? I will land you now… if we are clear.”

She said the image of giving full vent to her anger scared
her. So, instead, she just lay down on the kitchen floor and spread her arms out like a snow angel. She just lay there until, the next thing she knew, her husband was kneeling beside her and saying, “Honey, honey, can I get you anything? Like a drink or something?”

“Oh,” she said, “that would be great, but, um, what else do you have on your cart?”

T
he only good part about the following story is that I was commuting home from a trip when it happened and not on my way to work.

Sometimes life doesn’t go like we want it to. I thought about that the first time I realized I had not only boarded the wrong plane but had actually stayed on the plane and subsequently landed in the wrong state. I mean, I had boarded the wrong plane before; it can happen to anyone. But I’d never
actually taken off in the wrong plane and then landed four hours later at the wrong destination.

I didn’t even have a clue I was on the wrong plane until we landed. Then I poked the elbow of the passenger next to me to share a little humor over the flight attendant’s mistake. “Can you believe she just announced we landed in Seattle,” I snickered, “when we’re in Portland, Oregon?” Tee hee.

The man looked at me as if I were an animal in a zoo.

He wasn’t smiling. “We’re in Seattle,” he said.

“No, we’re not,” I said, feeling sorry for his bad case of jet lag. Then, to help him work through his obvious delusion, I continued, “I boarded a plane to Portland. I need to be in Portland. We’re in Portland. Portland, Oregon.”

I didn’t realize at first how high the pitch of my voice was becoming. It must have sounded like the back end of an MD88 engine, whining up to take off. Only this time the flight would be from all logical thought. “We’re in Portland,” I screeched. “We need to be in Portland.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced what happened next, but it was like one of those scary moments in a movie when the main character (me) appears very small and is looking up into distorted faces—faces that are round and huge and glaring down. It suddenly became the mission of all other passengers in the rows before me, behind me, and beside me to leer at me with news that would scare me straight.

“We’re in Seattle!”
they all said together, and it seemed to me that they were harmonizing in a singsong way. I was stunned.

So what could I do? I sat back down to absorb the shock. And waited for everyone to leave. Then when it was just me and the working crew left, I gathered up my bags. I said to the crew, as if in one last pitch for pity and help, “I got on the wrong plane. I mean, I thought I was going to Portland. I didn’t. I went to Seattle. This is a problem.”

They paused in their walk behind me and gave me the look of hatred that can only come from flight attendants to anyone holding up their crew-rest. I should have known better than to block their exit off the plane. They couldn’t leave until I did. But I was simply paralyzed with frustration over what had just happened.

Get off this plane before we kill you
, their look said. There was no mercy, no clemency. They wanted me gone!

I left, lugging my bags. I was now a defeated passenger who was going to get no reprieve from the airline I worked for. There are just a few things they ask of us, and one of them is to know where we are going and confirm that we are on the flight to get there. I had failed. Failed in the most basic of actions.

I felt stupid and low, and suddenly my bags seemed to weigh too much. (And I don’t just mean the bags under my
eyes.) I trudged down to the rental car desk and began the groveling process of begging for the lowest rate on a one-way rental—which took over an hour. Then I began the long drive from Seattle, Washington, to Portland, Oregon.

I called my husband from my cell phone in the car. “Where are you?” he said, “You should have landed an hour ago.”

“I did,” I said. “Just not in this state. I should be home by tomorrow morning.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“No. I’m not kidding, and I don’t feel like talking about it just now.”

Fortunately, I was then and am now married to the most wonderful man in the world. When he heard the whole story, he started laughing and then comforted me with the words, “It could happen to anyone.”

Of course it could happen to anyone. But it never would. In the history of the world, it would never happen again, but I took comfort in the fact that it could. At least in a world where someone is flying by the seat of her pants.