More Confessions of a Hostie (5 page)

I remember going to my high school reunion and meeting a girl who had been a complete bitch through the school years. Some people never change. She came up to me and said, ‘I heard you are an air hostess? I thought you would have become a professional or something. What do you do – pour tea and coffee all day?'

When someone is being condescending and judgmental about your life decisions, human nature works in such a way that you argue and defend yourself and your choices. Most times people turn defence into attack and point the blowtorch toward the person being condescending – in this case the school bitch.

I said this to her: ‘I've scaled the Great Wall of China, been to the top of the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State building, explored the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, the Grand Canyon, Victoria Falls, Niagara Falls, Iguassu Falls, Angel Falls, sailed around Sydney Harbour and the Greek islands, been skiing on four different continents, been whitewater rafting in nine different countries, been on safari in Africa more times than I can count, been diving on the Great Barrier Reef and around islands in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans, cage diving with sharks in South Africa, swimming with dolphins in Mexico, watched whales in Hervey Bay (Australia) and Hawaii, been skydiving, bungee-jumping, hang-gliding, gliding, and aerobatic flying. I have been to American Football games, major ball baseball, basketball, and ice-hockey all through the States, soccer games at Wembley, in London, and Stadio Olimpico, in Rome, tennis at Wimbledon, again in London, and Flushing Meadows, in New York, cricket at Lords, Sumo Wrestling in Japan, polo in Argentina, the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens, The British golf Open, The Melbourne Cup horse race, several motor sport Grand Prix events and Super-bike races, an Australian Rules grand-final at the MCG, with over 100,000 fans, and I have been to three different Olympic Games.'

I then drew a big breath and carried on, ‘I have drunk Moët & Chandon in Champagne; Bordeaux in Bordeaux; Cabinet Sauvignon in the Napa Valley, California; Shiraz in the Barossa Valley, South Australia; Chardonnay in Côte d'Or, France; Sauvignon Blanc in Marlborough, New Zealand; Chianti in Tuscany, Italy; Port in Douro, Portugal; Pinotage in Stellenbosch, South Africa; Malbec in the Maipo Valley, Chile; and Reisling on the Rhine in Rüdesheim, Germany.'

Taking another quick breathe, I continued, ‘I've eaten in a restaurant in Africa with lions standing only a few feet away, have been on the edge of a cliff in San Francisco that overlooked the Pacific, in a tree house in India, in a seaside restaurant near Cape Town, where the waves crashed against the windows, on a junk in Hong Kong Harbour, a tram in Melbourne, have eaten at a restaurant located seventy-five floors up in Singapore, and have eaten even higher in the mountains of Himalayas, have dined underwater, in the water and on the water, and under the stars in the middle of nowhere. I have met presidents, prime ministers, movie stars, famous musicians, humanitarians and some of the most fascinating people on the planet. I have been involved in charity programmes around the world and have had the opportunity to influence thousands of lives in dozens of countries. I have performed CPR to save a life, twice, and have once done an updated version the Heimlich manouevre on a woman who choked and had stopped breathing; and then performed CPR on her, and yes, she survived.'

I then paused, looked her in the eyes and asked, ‘So, what have you done with your life?'

The school bitch looked awestruck, unable to speak or breathe. I simply smiled at her, said nothing more and then walked away. I moved on to talk to people more worthy of my time and effort.

I am proud of my job, and I don't mind showing that to people.

To keep that job that I am so proud of, I am very much aware that I need to hit the books in Japan. I pack all my emergency training paperwork, but just in case I throw a few going-out clothes into my suitcase as well. You never know. I might get time to study on the plane.

I know that studying will be the last thing I want to do when I am tired, jetlagged and in a great country like Japan. The flight may not be full, I hope with all my heart, and I will actually get that chance to do some studying onboard.

sometimes the job stinks

The flight is full, and we are run off our feet. Studying will be the last thing I can do on this trip.

There are no spare seats, but there are no staff queuing up to get onboard either, which means our crew-rest area should at least be free. Well, I couldn't be more wrong.

I notice that a young girl sitting in the window seat two rows away from the back galley is in tears. She is sitting next to a huge, hairy man dressed in robes and headwear. I lean across the man to ask the girl if she is OK. Before I have finished my question, I already know the reason for her tears. The reason hits me like a sledgehammer – hits my nose, to be more precise. This guy stinks! He doesn't just smell a tad dreadful, but he absolutely reeks.

I get the poor girl out of there as quick as I possibly can.

Considering that we can't find any free seats on the aircraft, we have no choice but to put her in our crew-rest area. The look of sheer terror on the faces of the two people sitting directly behind the stinky man has me sympathetically moving these people away as well.

How can anyone not know how putrid they smell? Worst still, he has no idea that he is offending everyone within a football field radius. Even if his own nasal passages are blocked or if he has become immune to his own stench, he can surely notice the look of distress on the faces of people around him?

We can smell him even from the back galley – and guess who is in charge of that galley? Me, of course. I decide to take control of the situation.

I give instructions, from a distance, for the man to go into the toilets and freshen up. He does not understand me. Frustrated at his noncompliance, I instruct him to move to the now vacant seat beside him. This he understands. I then unload every air-freshening spray and odour-killing chemical I can find on the aircraft into the area where he is sitting. I am surprised the man does not gag from toxic overload; he is still oblivious to what's happening, however.

I am reminded of an episode of ‘Seinfeld', in which Jerry's car is filled with the stink of B.O., thanks to a valet parking his car. Seinfeld refers to the odour as an ‘entity': ‘Don't you see what's happening here? It's attached itself to me! It's alive! And it's destroying the lives of everyone in its path. This is not just an odour – you need a priest to get rid of this thing. It's a presence! It's The Beast!' Seinfeld cries in that episode The man's B.O. is exactly that, an entity, and it has attached itself to the galley. I am sure that only an exorcism can save us from it now. I brew coffee and leave it uncovered on the bench in the hope the aroma will waft through the area and at least mask the man's foul smell. It does not help. I even spray the area with my good Chanel Coco Mademoiselle perfume, but that does nothing to relieve us of the stink. It's almost as if I'm trying to fight a bushfire with a glass of water.

When flights are full it is often difficult to serve everyone efficiently, even when nothing goes wrong. In addition to moving about passengers as well as sanitising and deodorising, we have other things to deal with: a minor medical issue, wherein an elderly Japanese woman starts feeling faint; increasing turbulence; a woman, with a fear of flying, freaks out because of that turbulence; and one of the toilets breaks down.

We go about fixing all this. The Japanese woman is placed on oxygen, and she feels better. However, we still need to monitor her at regular intervals. A couple of us pacify the woman with a fear of flying, and soon she is OK, but she will also need our constant reassurance and attention. It all adds to the workload. We lock-off the unserviceable toilet, but although the others are functional, losing one toilet on the flight proves to be a serious nuisance.

However, the turbulence problem is not so easily fixed. In fact, it only breeds more problems for us. The persistent turbulence combined with the rancid body odour floating through the back of the cabin makes everyone feel uncomfortable, and extremely nauseous. One passenger throws up, followed by another, and yet another. It is a concertina effect. Now we have both body odor and vomit to contend with.

With that one toilet out-of-action, the queue of nauseated people grows exponentially outside the few remaining working toilets. The turbulence continues, the man's stench keeps floating in, and passengers keep getting sick. Some of the queuing passengers have sick bags in their hands already. Some of those bags are yet to be used. Some have already been used.

In a cruel twist of fate, it is a mid-cabin toilet that is inoperable, leaving the majority of sick passengers queuing at the two toilets at the back of the aircraft – and that is exactly where the B.O. ‘entity' has attached itself.

One of the things that twenty years of being a hostie has taught me is to preempt situations. I grab a handful of sick bags and hand them out to those in the toilet queue. I also hand out extra bags to the few people who have remained seated and are yet to fall sick. In an act of brazen satire I even hand the B.O. man a sick bag – well, actually I just throw it on the spare seat beside him whilst moving away at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. I also keep a sick bag for myself.

It is not just the rear of the aircraft where we are having passengers fall sick. The mid-section of the plane is mostly a travel group of Japanese school children, and the kids are only too eager to try and taste everything Western. They eat Western food, drink bucket loads of Coca-Cola and eat Western candy. Their bodies are not used to processing so much non-Japanese cuisine and are unable to cope with the Western overload. The turbulence only makes thing worse, and these kids soon enter their own world of pain.

The toilet queues grow. The turbulence increases. The perfect storm that's still raging outside is turning more destructive by the second. There are over a dozen sick adults and as many children now desperate to use a toilet. The aircraft is shaking quite violently, and as much as these people need a toilet, they can't use one. The seatbelt sign comes on.

‘Everybody, please take your seats while the seatbelt sign is illuminated,' I try to yell in the most non-threatening voice I can manage. I feel so sorry for these people. I can see the morose look on the faces of those sitting near the B.O. source as they return to their seats. They would rather risk possible physical injury from the turbulence than return to their stench-effected seats – I can't blame them for feeling that way. I'm sitting near the stink bomb as well, and I feel the exact same way. The passengers have no choice, but to sit down. I have no choice, but to sit down.

My smelling sensors have become so badly violated that I am becoming somewhat immune to the disgusting smells. Even so, I sit in numbed silence. ‘God, I hope this ends soon,' I whisper under my breath repeatedly.

The seatbelt light stays on for what feels like an eternity. That gives me plenty of time to contemplate the gravity of the situation and the cause of most of it. Everyone in the back few rows has been sick except for the man with the worst body odor in the history of bad body odors. Is there no justice? Where is karma when you need it?

The amount of time it takes for someone to vomit is inversely proportionate to the time it takes to clean it up. When the turbulence subsides and the seatbelt sign is finally turned off, the crew work overtime to clean up the mess, and that mess is everywhere. I wish we could send someone into the toilets wearing a full protective body-suit, like they do when people enter toxic waste areas. All we have are wafer-thin disposable gloves. The air-freshening sprays onboard have all been used already. The B.O. man is wearing them as cologne.

Cleaning the violated toilets is too graphic a process to describe here. Regardless, they still have to be cleaned. It is probably the worst part of our job. There is no point complaining – it just has to be done. The first toilet I clean is in the mid-cabin. Fortunately the mid-cabin toilets are not as badly violated as the ones in the back are.

As I walk to those rear toilets, I feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter. I used to feel the same way when, as a child, I was being taken to the dentist. I dreaded the experience, but I knew there was no way to get out of doing it.

When I do return to the back toilets, the one located behind the B.O. man is occupied. I explain to the queuing passengers that I need to go inside to clean it for them. Of course, they understand.

One passenger even says, ‘You poor dear.'

As the toilet door opens, I see that the B.O. man is getting off his seat and stepping into the aisle. He rudely pushes past several passengers and comes to the front of the queue. When the toilet door unfolds fully open, an ashen-faced passenger emerges, shaking her head to indicate just how bad the state of the toilet is. As she leaves I can see the inside of the toilet. Again, words cannot adequately describe the revulsion I feel. Just as I am about to suck it up and enter, the B.O. man almost pushes me out of the way to get into the toilet. Although I have one foot inside the toilet, I take a step backwards, hold the door open, and with a wry smile I allow the man to pass.

‘There you go sir – it's all yours.'

Maybe there is such a thing as karma after all.

As I wait outside the toilet, my smile is suddenly wiped off my face when I realise that I have to go in next. What was I thinking? Karma clearly has somewhere more important to be.

When he finally exits the toilet I turn to make eye contact with several of the passengers. They can see the look of sheer terror on my face, and I can tell that no one wants to be in my shoes – not now, not ever.

I take a big breath, and under that breath I mutter, ‘Oh my god, I'm going in. If I don't make it out alive, please donate my body to medical research.'

Earlier I had noticed an elderly couple sitting in the seats directly in front of the B.O. man. The lady had been sick, of course, and had managed to contain the contents in her sick bag. I had taken away that sick bag and given her another one, for which she was very appreciative. She still has a ghostly pale complexion, but she is too polite to say anything. Her husband is comforting her, but he has not complained nor drawn attention to the situation.