More Confessions of a Hostie (2 page)

‘Look at this Todd's handbag. Isn't it divine. I got it for just…'

‘I bought this for my niece. It's Osh Gosh,'

‘Check out this necklace. Don't you love it? It was a bargain at…'

Both girls are a year or two older than me, and they are both single. I can tell that they are single just by looking at their shopping bags; they are full of ‘me' items – a dead giveaway. A lot of flight attendants are single girls, particularly those who have been flying for many years. It is a lifestyle that attracts strong independent women. Often that independence comes at the expense of a relationship. Some of the girls have chosen that path. Some have not. I am quietly confident that both these single girls are not necessarily bitter and twisted, but you can't be sure. The last thing I want to be is one of those girls who start every sentence with ‘My boyfriend this' or ‘My boyfriend that'.

Instead, I decide to talk to them about our one common love. ‘How good is the shopping?'; ‘I saw this gorgeous dress, and I might just have to go back and try it on' and so on. We also discuss brands: Prada, Gucci and YSL, in particular. The girls decide to join me for lunch. Shopping again dominates the conversation as we sip (white) wine and soak up the magical view over Stanley Bay. I need to keep an eye on the time. My plan is to have a quick power-shop after lunch and then head back to the hotel for a nap.

I have to work through the night. This layover was only meant to be for only twenty-four hours, but with the delayed flight coming in, it is now even shorter. I am having only one glass of wine as there are strict rules regarding alcohol and crew. We are not allowed to have a drink eight hours before we board a flight. Some joke that it is not eight hours, but eight feet from the aircraft.

It is a rule I adhere to strictly.

I probably shouldn't even have even this one drink, I think to myself. And that's not because of the eight-hour rule, but because I am going to take a sleeping pill later. Sleeping pills and alcohol don't mix. Recently a crew member mixed the two and ended up in all sorts of trouble when he slept through his hotel wake-up call. The procedure for the hotels is that when a crew member doesn't answer their wake-up call, hotel security unlock the door and enter. In this case the flight attendant was so startled and disorientated at being woken by a stranger that he punched the security staffer; he faced charges and almost lost his job over the incident.

My friend Mary Gomez has gotten into trouble, as well, on more than one occasion because she mixed sleeping tablets with alcohol. She ended up walking around a hotel totally naked. It sounds funny, but poor Mary did this twice (as far as I know) within the space of a few weeks and at the same hotel. That hotel didn't take kindly to a delirious woman wandering around its hallways stark-naked and knocking on guests' doors, whilst singing a Nineties rock ballad.

Rumour has it that it was a Bon Jovi song, but that's something even Mary cannot confirm or deny.

I've faced similar problems onboard aircrafts. It usually involves a woman, alcohol and sleeping pills.

It habitually ends in disaster.

I've personally witnessed as well as been involved in two incidents where women have been so out-of-control they have had to be restrained and arrested. One of these women woke up and told the passenger seated next to her that she had a great sleep. It was only a few moments later that she discovered she was hand-cuffed. The woman had no recollection at all of what she had done – well, what she had done was terrorise everyone around her!

So, here's something to remember: never ever mix alcohol and medication of any sort, particularly sleeping tablets. If you do, then don't place yourself in an oxygen-reduced aluminum tube with hundreds of other people around you, with nowhere to run or hide. Flight attendants have access to handcuffs, and are trained to use them.

I am confident, however, that having just one glass of wine hours before taking a sleeping pill is not going to have me running around the hotel in my birthday suit singing ‘Living On a Prayer', but a second glass just might. So, I resist the temptation to have any more.

nowhere to run and fewer places to hide

Our flight out of Hong Kong is full, full and then full some more. Not only is every seat sold, we have over forty staff members waiting on a standby arrangement to get onboard should even one seat become available. If we could strap passengers to the wing, we would.

Apparently our flights out of HKG (the code for Hong Kong) have been full all week, and some of these staff members have been stuck in Hong Kong for as long. Most stay at a hotel near the airport and wait around the terminal all day, hoping to get on a flight that would take them home. I feel bad for them. Being delayed a couple of hours in a terminal is bad enough, but I could only imagine what it would be like to spend many days in one.

This is one of the real drawbacks about using staff benefits to fly. Yes, the ticket is much cheaper, but there are no guarantees of getting a seat, something that the poor souls living at the airport all week have discovered only too late.

The aircraft we are working on tonight has four crew-rest seats. This is the place we come to in order to take a quick break from the throng of passengers during our fourteen-hour flight.

I often ask my best friend Helen, a school teacher, ‘Could you imagine standing in front of your students for hours and hours? And the only break you get is to sit in the same room as the kids?' Helen shivers at the thought of doing something like that.

We do have a thin piece of curtain hung at the entrance of the crew-rest area, to give us some privacy. The seats, however, are zoo-class passenger seats, not first-class thrones. Dean's brother, Danny, who also flies, is quite tall. When he sits in the crew-rest seats, he rests his chin on his knees and tries to get some sleep. Does he manage to fall sleep though? Absolutely not.

I am usually unable to get any sleep in the crew-rest area as well. One time, on a flight from India, I defied the odds and was fast asleep. Just after I had nodded off, the curtain was rudely yanked back by a man, who demanded that I bring him a scotch and coke. He scared the living daylights out of me.

Did he get his scotch? I think you know the answer to that one.

I am not the only crew member on this flight who is desperate to get some sleep. Even so, the crew collectively agrees to allow our crew-rest seats to be used by staff trying to get on the flight. At least we can help four of those poor stranded people to get home. The drawback for those staff members who get these seats is that they need to vacate the seats and move
somewhere else
when the working crew need those same seats for their break. Unfortunately, there is no
somewhere else
on an aircraft. Every nook and cranny on a plane has something in it. There is no such thing as wasted space.

On almost every flight, more particularly night flights, there is usually one person who refuses to stay in their seat throughout the flight. As soon as the seatbelt sign is turned off, they jump out of their seats and loiter wherever they can loiter. The only problem is that, as I have pointed out, there is nowhere to go on an aircraft. They just wander around the aircraft aimlessly and get in everyone's way, or they stumble into the galleys and want to chat. These people, who are ignorant to everyone else around them, are usually the last kind of people the crew wants to chat with anyway. It is a conundrum for the crew when such wanderers end up in the galley. Just like the passengers, we have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

‘There are 420 people on this plane, and 419 of them are seated in the seat they paid for. Yet, here you are, walking around and getting in everyone's way, particularly the crew's? You don't see the problem with that?' I want to scream at such wanderers.

On this flight we have the usual nomads, but to add salt to our wounds, we also have four additional staff members on board, who have no choice but to stand. The galley becomes a claustrophobic's nightmare. On one flight some years ago I had a man bail me up in the galley. This man had been drinking, but not enough to warrant cutting off his supply. This man was flirting, but still hadn't crossed any major harassment lines. He was creepy, but there's no law against that. It didn't matter how many times I hinted for him to return to his seat, I was ignored. Eventually I actually suggested he should return to his seat as we were about to prepare the galley for the next meal service. My words still fell on deaf ears.

In the end I had to do something really sneaky: I snuck out of the galley momentarily and rang the captain from one of the crew phones. I told the captain that a passenger from the cabin, who had consumed one too many drinks, had come into the galley and was disturbing us, and although he was not drunk he had ignored our requests to return to his seat. Passengers are not allowed to wander around the aircraft drinking alcohol, something the captain is only too aware of. The man was not drinking in the cabin per se, but my careful use of words made it seem so.

By turning on the seatbelt sign the man would be legally required to take his seat. If he still refused to so, we would be in a position to take sterner action. The captain obliged and the seatbelt was turned on, for only thirty seconds or so. It was enough time for my cunning plan to work. The man was forced to leave the galley and return to his seat. When the seatbelt sign was turned off, I returned to the galley. While I was smiling to myself and basking in the glory of hatching such a brilliant plan, the man walked back into the galley.

‘Gee, the seatbelt sign didn't stay on long. And there wasn't even a bump,' he said.

He didn't leave the galley until it was time for us to land.

the adjective of ‘break' is ‘broken'

When it is time for my break, I take my seat in the crew-rest area and pull across the flimsy piece of curtain to give myself some privacy. I need to get some sleep before I step out into the brightly lit cabin again and then work for four more hours. I spend most of my time sitting in the uncomfortably small seat, thinking about how uncomfortably small the seat is. Then I do something that I rarely do – I fall asleep. I sleep for a solid five or even six minutes before a passenger's wayward limb, pushes past the curtain, to smack into my shoulder with the force of a gridiron linebacker. My bones rattle. I am supposed to be on a break, not having people break my bones.

The curtain may stop me from seeing who the unbalanced offender is, but does nothing to stop me from getting angry. Sitting in the aisle crew-rest seat as I am, it is a constant stream of bumping and thumping. If there is turbulence (and there is) it is much worse. When an unsteady passenger needs to balance themselves in the cabin, they generally use the seat or the shoulder of a seat to do so. Place a curtain in front of the seat, and they grab onto anything that lies beyond the curtain. That anything in the past has included my head, my shoulder, and also parts of my body that are private and shouldn't be touched without my consent.

Yet, it's not an easy decision to make. Remove the curtain, and we remove with it our privacy. It's a dilemma, honestly. The fact that these crew-rest seats are located right in front of a toilet only makes them all the more uncomfortable for us. The sound of a toilet flushing is all we can hear, and that's why we wear ear-plugs while sitting in the crew-rest seats. The less-than-desirable odours that assail our noses, on the other hand, we can do nothing about. We can do even less about being groped through the curtains.

I manage to grab several more five- or six-minute mini sleeps before I am woken by another crew member and beckoned to come back to work. Although I have not slept for very long, I am in a near comatose-state. I feel like I've been hit by more than a brick. I've been hit by the whole brick wall.

I know it only gets worse from here. Can you imagine rolling out of bed, still exhausted, and step straight out of a dark room and into a room as bright and alive as a discotheque? And while you do this, more than two hundred people are staring right at you. That's exactly what a hostie has to do after taking a nap in the crew-rest area and then go back into the cabin again. We have to walk past hordes of peering eyes and demanding mouths, and into the galley, then take the meal-service cart and start handing out food to the very people who have just watched you wake up.

I slink out of the crew-rest seat and dart towards the galley. The toilets are all busy, so I make another plan quickly: I will dive into the galley, splash water on my face and try to wake up, and then attempt to reapply my make-up.

My plan fails, of course. Three paces from the galley, a passenger stops me.

‘My seat is broken,' he laments.

‘Damn it,' I think to myself. ‘I was nearly there.'

He is right, the seat is broken. The recline-button is jammed, and the seat won't return to its upright position. This is definitely a problem. The seat must be upright for landing. It is a legal requirement. If we cannot get the seat upright, it will not only affect the seat in question, but also the seat in the row behind it. If we weren't fuller than full, we could move him to another seat, but that is not an option.

I try to fix it myself; after all, my twenty years of flying experience has taught me how to be an amateur aircraft engineer (away from the engines at least). Even so, I cannot fix the seat. I summon the boss.

‘If anyone can fix the seat, he can,' I reassure myself and the passenger with the broken seat.

I was wrong – the boss can't fix it.

We come up with a rather ingenious short-term solution. We manage to push the seat to the upright position and then use a combination of extension seatbelts to keep the seat roughly in this position. As pleased as we are with the outcome, it has taken over ten minutes to do this. The rest of the crew have already begun with the breakfast meal service. I quickly rush to a cart and begin handing out meals. I have not had time to glamour myself up. I just hope my lipstick has stayed somewhere in the vicinity of my lips and my eye shadow has remained above my eyes. It is a horrible feeling to know you don't look your best and yet are unable to do anything about it. As soon as time permits, I will duck into the toilets and freshen up, I tell myself. However, I know very well that when you have just started a meal service on a full aircraft, ‘when time permits' is a long time away.