Confessions of a Hostie (14 page)

‘Geoff, this lady needs to get off the plane if we cannot give her an aisle seat.'

He understands the situation exactly.

Geoff is decisive, ‘Thanks Danielle, leave her here with me. If she won't take her assigned seat, we will get the ground staff to offload her.'

As I leave I can see the fear in the woman's eyes.

I am confident that Geoff has her measure. In between boarding other passengers, he will explain to her the conditions of travel as per her ticket. It is tough for our managers during the boarding process. He has to manage the boarding of over two-hundred people, basically on his own, and he has only minutes to do this. Should a problem arise (and they always do) he has to deal with it quickly and effectively, and he does.

I walk back down the aisle, following a youngish girl who is probably in her early twenties, but acts so much younger. She makes several comments that appear innocent, but I can tell that she is not overly bright. The wheel is spinning, but me thinks that the hamster is dead.

The boarding mayhem continues. Most of the cat owners remain standing in the misguided hope that somehow a whole row of aisle seats will magically appear before them. One of these women has an expression on her face that could curdle her cat's milk.

She's is going to be so much fun to deal with on the flight.

I can see the young girl, who I have followed down the cabin, staring at her boarding pass and then studying the seat numbers under the in-cabin lockers. It seems like finding her seat is obviously rocket science to this girl. She looks at her boarding pass again, with the intensity of a world championship chess contender, and then moves through a few more rows, to repeat the same routine.

The large Polynesian man is sitting in an aisle seat. Well, at least some of him is. The rest of him spills over the poor passenger beside him and the aisle itself. I look past his hulking frame to see the young girl, and I finally realise what seat she is in.

The aisle seat that this young girl is staring at is the only free seat in the area, but for some reason she stares at her boarding pass and the placard featuring the seat numbers at least four times to make quadruple-sure. Totally oblivious to the last of the passengers queuing behind her, instead of moving into the seat with her bag and letting them pass, she tries (unsuccessfully) to put her bag in the already full overhead locker.

Airline manufacturers design and make their aircraft based on the assumption that each passenger is going to carry money, a passport, a camera and a toothbrush onto the plane. Most passengers, however, bring along half the contents of their bedroom wardrobe, enough toiletries to outlast a nuclear fallout, the complete fiction section from the local bookstore and their kitchen sink.

The young girl's bag is not as big as some I have seen, but the lockers directly above her are full. This girl just doesn't have the brain-matter to work out that she might have to manoeuvre the other bags or use another locker to fit in her own luggage. I am still busy dealing with other passengers, however I keep one wary but amused eye on the young girl. Even though I am some distance away, I can tell that her bag is not going to fit in the locker she is trying to push it into.

Hell, Blind Freddy could see that it isn't going to fit there.

Regardless of the bleeding obvious, or the advice of the passengers frustratingly queued up behind her, the young girl continues to think that if she tries a different angle the results will be different. It is not until I make my way to her and open the locker next to the one she has bludgeoned for the last five minutes that she realises that there are other options apart from futility.

Amidst the young girl's locker shenanigans, I notice that the woman who I had taken to the front door has taken her seat, and it is not an aisle seat. She looks like she is ready to commit multiple murders, but she is at least seated.

Well done, Geoff!

I look across to try and get Damien's attention as I'd love for him to see the expression on this sour woman's face, but I noticed that he is in his own world of boarding pain. A woman has just dumped a massive bag in the aisle. The bag obviously weighs a ton, but she nonchalantly and quite rudely tells Damien to put it in the locker.

She didn't even have the decency to make eye contact with Damien as she says this. She then turns her back to him and walks away.

Damien is going to read her the riot act, I think to myself. I can see the look in his eye, and although I would love to listen to what Damien has to tell her, I am busy with my own rude passengers. I will have to wait to find out what blunt words of wisdom he gave her.

I know that he will make her put her own bag in the overhead locker, and I just hope he uses words such as ‘occupational health and safety', ‘if it is under the allowable onboard weight limit', ‘for the safety of all passengers…' and so on. That way when there is a customer complaint (and there usually is with Damien) and I get called into the office, I can back up his claims and insist that he acted professionally.

There are so many times that we must witness a display of rudeness by passengers, on a scale most people could not fathom dealing with in their own workplaces, but we still need to hold it together and choose our words carefully. I know Damien won't be that thoughtful.

I just hope he doesn't swear.

When the last passenger has boarded, Geoff makes his ‘Welcome onboard' PA, including instructions for cabin preparation and for all passengers to be seated. Getting the last of the cat owners to climb into their non-aisle seats is as hard as trying to pry a toy out of a child's hands. I give them an extra reminder. So does Damien.

I grab an extension seat belt and make my way toward the large Polynesian man whilst dozens of voices ask me for food and drinks. When we are preparing the cabin for take-off we need to take control quickly and surely, and this often means having to look at the passengers collectively and not as individuals.

Using my well-chosen plane speak, I reply to most passengers, but without breaking my stride, ‘Only safety-related duties at the moment, thanks folks'. It is hard not to appear as rude, but time constraints rarely allow us to give personalised service.

In the past twenty years of flying, I have never been called into the office for something I have said. However, if they could know what I sometimes think about, I would have been sacked years ago.

lessons in human behaviour

Damien and I sit in our crew seats for take-off. Our seats are between a bulkhead and a toilet flanked by the over-wing exits. It is a great spot to gossip. If you speak softly, the passengers nearby can't hear you. On most aircrafts, we are seated opposite passengers for take-off and landing. It is sometimes uncomfortable sitting eyeball to eyeball with a stranger, especially if you've have just been assertive with that same stranger over safety-related issues during the boarding process.

On a recent flight, the gentleman in the exit-row seat opposite mine was one of the rudest people I have ever met. As soon as he came onboard, it became evident how little respect he had for his fellow passengers and the crew. As soon as he was finished with dinner, he took the tray off his fold-out table and placed it on the floor in front of my crew-seat and the exit.

I find such impoliteness appalling. This behaviour is my pet peeve. I once slipped on a tray that had been placed on the floor so carelessly; luckily, I had been able to grab hold of a cart and keep myself from falling.

I would have then liked to add some well-chosen expletives to communicate my utter disdain for the man, but of course I don't. Instead, I go into plane speak and say, ‘Excuse me, sir. Placing your tray on the floor is a safety issue for the crew as well as for other passengers. You have two options, you can either pick up your tray and hold it until we come along with the cart and collect it or you can carry it to the back galley and place it on the bench.'

True to his arrogant form he snaps, ‘Why don't
you
pick it up now and take it away?'

In all my years I have never got down on my knees to pick up a tray from near the feet of an able-bodied person. If this guy thought I was going to start now, he had another think coming.

I really wanted to pick up his tray and drop the remaining contents on his head, but again, a hostie must be professional in the most trying of times.

‘Sir, I don't think you have listened to my safety-related instructions so I will repeat them to you one more time.
You
can either pick up your tray and hold it until we come and collect it, or
you
can carry it to the galley and place it on the bench there.'

The man did listen this time. And he did exactly as he was told to.

Thankfully, on this flight, we don't have to sit opposite passengers. We sit peacefully in our little hidey-hole and chitchat. It is the perfect opportunity to vent our anger at the ridiculously gruesome boarding we have just had to endure, and vent anger Damien does. I can finally find out what he said to the woman who dropped her big bag in the aisle and then walked away.

It turns out that he didn't choose his words carefully at all, just like I had suspected.

‘Damn it, Damien, you're going to have me in the office over this.'

‘She hasn't got a leg to stand on as the bag was over the allowable weight limit. I am not going to throw my back out for anyone, especially that pretentious little hussy.'

I must confess that the vast majority of passengers are well-behaved and respectful, it's just we don't tend to gossip about the good ones. This flight has all the makings of being a flight attendant's nightmare, but a gossiper's dream.

We begin to take-off, but the call-lights are lighting up the cabin like a Christmas tree.

Damien speaks out loud what I am thinking to myself, ‘Don't these people know that the seat belt sign is on and that no one can serve them now?'

It's truly astounding how thoughtless some of the travelling public can be. Even during turbulence, with the seat belt sign on, there are always a few people who give a look of death if the crew don't continue serving them. A man on a recent flight actually said something about how he had been waiting ten minutes to be served a drink. The fact that the seat belt sign had remained illuminated during this time and several announcements had been made about turbulence had somehow missed the man's attention. Unless this guy was in some sort of brain-dead coma, he should have known what was happening.

I felt like saying to him, ‘I am so sorry, sir, that I couldn't serve you. If it were up to me I would make the crew wear helmets and knee- and elbow pads so we can continue the service regardless of the possible injuries we could sustain during turbulence.'

Not all passengers press their call-bells by choice however. Often it is a mistake. Some people lack the basic intellect to work out which button does what, so they press anything they can find. That's my theory anyhow.

I decide to test my theory now. From my crew-seat, I stick out my head into the aisle to see the young girl (the same one who took eons to find her seat and load her bags, the same one who is a few sandwiches short of a picnic) and I see that her call light is on. So maybe my theory is correct after all.

As soon as the seat-belt sign is turned off, I jump out of my seat, bypass at least a dozen call-lights, and make my way to the front of the aircraft where there is a magic button. Located on a panel containing a myriad of other buttons, there it is, easy to locate because it is the most worn. It is the call-bell-reset button. One press, and the Christmas tree lights disappear.

If only I could make them disappear forever.

As I walk back down the aisle, my call-bell reprieve is short lived as the familiar, yet annoying sound of ‘bing' continues to resonate throughout the cabin. I, like the other crew, ignore them as we prepare the drinks cart. Most of the call lights are probably for drinks anyway, I predict.

Of course, I'm right. And boy do the passengers drink.

The Polynesian man drinks his first drink and asks for a second even before I have moved to the next row. The young girl, who is a few clowns short of a circus, also downs her drink with the ferocity of a seasoned alcoholic. Everybody drinks, with the exception of some of the cat owners. These women are so upset and so childish that they refuse everything. By refusing they must be under the misguided notion that they are making some sort of statement. The only statement it makes is: I am foolish. Also, no one gives a damn.

Their whole world revolves around having an aisle seat. However, it is unfortunate that they didn't get to the check-in counters early enough to guarantee their seat, and my sanity. When they stick their crusty palms in front of my face and look away in disdain as if to say, ‘Get the hell away from me. I don't want a damn thing from you or your airline', I want to scream, ‘There are children starving in Africa. Get a life and grow up!'

I don't do that though. I simply smile and say, ‘OK, that's fine'.

Damien on the other hand cannot hold himself back. ‘Fantastic, one less person to serve!' he snaps back. Every little passenger indiscretion is met with a roll of his eyes and a similarly biting satirical retort.

One youngish guy asks Damien, ‘What beers do you have?'

Damien politely gives him the name of the four beers we have onboard.

The passenger then asks, ‘But do you have …?'

I can see that Damien wants to jump across the seat and scruff this guy by the throat.

He turns to this guy, ‘Do you honestly think that we have the beer you want, but I have deliberately not told you about it just to spite you?' The guy had no idea what to say. He quietly takes whatever brand of beer Damien chooses to give him.

Another female passenger asks for a chocolate bar with a glass of a wine. I have never heard of someone wanting chocolate with a drink, and I am curious to see how Damien is going to handle it.