Confessions of a Hostie Read online

  Just as I am praying for the seat belt sign to stay on for the whole flight, the dreaded ‘bing’ sound goes off.

  I unbuckle my seatbelt and mutter, ‘Oh God, here we go.’

  The next six hours are pure torture. The entire crew, with the exception of Princess Gabrielle, work like dogs to clean the cabin and feed the passengers. Just as the annoying turbulence subsides and the last of the vomit has been cleaned up, guess who miraculously recovers? Princess Gabrielle, of course.

  It must have been hell surely for her, sitting there and taking rest, while we were busy doing work that felt as terrible as having our teeth pulled.

  Most cabin crew are extremely diligent and work harder than is required of them. The few members who don’t do any work, like Gabrielle Reiner, almost always stick out like a sore thumb. Being a flight attendant is truly about working in a team, and if someone doesn’t pull their weight it becomes noticeable immediately. All the crew members have noticed Gabrielle, and none of them are happy.

  None of us tell the Princess what we really feel about her though. Most of us just avoid her, but I can guarantee that nobody will forget her or her actions – or the lack of actions. When I get home I will do everything in my power to forget this flight. However, I cannot forget Gabrielle’s laziness, no matter how hard I try. My blood boils as I think about how the princess gets paid as much as I do, but gets away with doing half the work I do. And it is not just me who gets short changed by her behaviour. All the crew members need to work harder, and the passengers ultimately receive proportionately less service. For every action (or lack of action) there are consequences. I am so angry.

  I once read a great quote in a comic strip: ‘I know the world isn’t fair, but why isn’t it ever unfair in my favour?’

  that’s what friends are for

  When I finally arrive home, I am completely shattered. My body still feels like it is going up and down with the turbulence. I have been seasick before, and this feels similar to that. The one saving grace is I now have four glorious days off before my next trip. For now I sleep, and then I will enjoy every precious second of being at home.

  The bed feels like it is rocking from side to side, but I am so exhausted that I could probably sleep on a roller coaster. When I wake up, I do absolutely nothing. Sometimes doing nothing is vastly underrated. I enjoy every second of that nothingness.

  At least until the phone rings. It is Mary-go-round on the other end, and she is hysterical.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  When you ask a question like that to a crying woman, you just know that you’re going to be listening to her answer for a long time.

  Mary is obviously drunk or drugged or both, and she is home alone. She shares an apartment with a gay guy, who also flies, but he is away on a trip. Thank god, she doesn’t live on her own, I think to myself. This woman just couldn’t handle that.

  Mary tells me that she and Mike have just had the world’s biggest fight and – whoever saw this coming (everyone) – it’s all over between them. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to predict this would happen, I want to tell her. However, she is threatening to throw herself over her balcony. Mary makes a lot of bad decisions. One of them is choosing to live on the tenth floor of an apartment block.

  Although this is not the first time she has made such threats, I know I should go over to her place and calm her down.

  The first thing I do when I get there is lock the balcony door. The second thing I do is take the glass of pure vodka out of her hand.

  Just as I begin to calm her down, the phone rings. It is Mike, she tells me when she picks up, and he wants to apologise to her. She is absorbed in the phone call for over an hour, while I sit there thinking, ‘Of all the things I could be doing right now …’

  After a point, I realise that Mary has forgotten all about me. She doesn’t even remember I am in the room with her anymore. I go up to her, indicate that I am leaving and ask for her to call me later. She breaks the conversation with Mike for a heartbeat and looks up at me with puppy-dog eyes, ‘Mike still loves me.’

  I am out of there before she can say something else.

  Is this the last time I will get a suicidal call from Mary? Of course, not.

  Will I rush over to her place to help her again, if I have to? Of course, yes.

  I desperately need a dose of reality, so I call Helen.

  We meet at our usual café, and she listens patiently to all my stories about Mary although she has heard them before. Helen has met Mary only once, at a party I threw years ago. Mary, as one would expect from her, ended up getting sloshed and having sex with a man, whom both Helen and I know, in the toilet. I know Helen doesn’t have any respect for Mary (In all fairness, Mary doesn’t have any respect for Mary).

  Helen still cannot fathom how anyone would want to have sex in a toilet. If Helen only knew that this happened all the time (particularly with the likes of Mary), and at 35,000 feet too. The Mile High Club is not a myth after all – and if they ever elect a president, I am sure it would be Mary.

  Like Helen, I believe that toilets – especially toilets in aircrafts – are the last place in the world I’d want to have sex in. Yet some people do just that. I’ve been on flights where it is obvious that a couple is planning to go in there, but the crew members generally turn a blind eye if the couple is subtle about it.

  However, sometimes, couples are not so subtle and that’s where we have to intervene. I’ve seen things that a single well-bred woman like me should never have to see. And it is not just heterosexual couples who are up to no good. The most trouble I have ever had was with a lesbian couple – they didn’t end their action in the toilets, but brought it back to their seats.

  And it’s not just the passengers who misbehave.

  There is a story about Mary that I haven’t told Helen yet. A year or so ago Mary was in all sorts of trouble with the company over an incident in our crew-rest area. A 747 usually has a rest area with little bunks in the tail of the plane. Mary was up there with another crew member, who just happened to be married to another flight attendant, although his wife was not on that flight.

  Apparently Mary climbed into his bunk in the crew-rest area, at his request, and the ensuing shenanigans were seen and heard by another not-so-impressed crew member. That member then reported the incident to the company, and both offenders were dragged into the office.

  Mary has been caught red-handed on a number of occasions and on a number of charges, but this was the first time she has been caught having sex on the plane – the key word here is, of course, ‘caught’. Both she and her married lover didn’t deny being in the bunk together, but did deny doing anything sexual, thus going with the Bill Clinton ‘I did not have sexual relations’ defence. With only the verbal evidence of the crew member against them, both offenders were let off with a warning.

  It is very hard to get sacked from this job – just ask Mary.

  There are plenty of married guys who work as hosties. A few are married to other hosties, most are not. But, married or not, not all of them are sleazy like Mary’s crew-rest buddy. In fact there is a terrific married man that I have done a few trips with. Coincidentally, his name is also Danny. He calls me Danny L. and I call him Danny W., as his last name is Weily. Along with the matching first names, we also have a lot more in common. He is not a bad-looking guy, but there is no way he would ever cross any line with me. I trust him implicitly, and he trusts me just as much.

  We travelled to Rome once, years ago, and I don’t remember ever laughing as much as I did with my namesake while on the trip. I haven’t seen Danny for a while, but I have a trip with him later in my roster, and that trip is one I am really looking forward to. Helen does not want to hear about well-behaved married men like Danny. She wants to hear juicy gossip.

  ‘Have you seen any celebrities?’ Helen asks as she usually does, and breaks me out of my thoughts about Mary, Danny and sex on airplanes.

  I decide to talk to
Helen about what she wants to hear, celebrities.

  ‘Did I tell you that I had Hugh Jackman onboard?’

  Helen moves to the edge of her seat, excited. ‘Hugh Jackman? You mean ‘Wolverine’ Jackman? ‘Van Helsing’ Jackman? I love him. What was he like?’

  The reality is I did have him on board, but it was probably two years ago. Hence, technically, this is not a lie. I know how much Helen loves these stories.

  ‘He was such a nice guy.’

  Helen gushes, ‘I thought he would be.’

  Helen’s favourite celebrity story, which I have told her and she has then retold to everyone she knows goes something like this: a particular celebrity singing-diva, with a reputation for being difficult, was sitting in first class and arguing with a crew member over a simple safety-related request he had made.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ the diva protested.

  The flight attendant turned to his passing supervisor and simply said, ‘Can you get me the passenger list, please? This woman doesn’t know who she is.’

  I wasn’t actually on that flight, and this may as well be an urban myth, but Helen lives for such stories. As I have explained already to Helen, most celebrities are great onboard – most, but not all. When we spend as much time as we do with them, we often catch them with their media-guard down, and thus get to see the real person behind it. Sometimes that real person isn’t so nice.

  The crew is particularly savage with celebrities who are disrespectful to or dismissive of us, and news about how badly they behaved travels faster through our network of hosties than through any gossip magazine.

  I leave Helen to go back to my favourite recreational activity – doing nothing. My nothingness is briefly interrupted by an apologetic and now deliriously happy Mary. It is hard work having a friend like Mary, but she does have a good heart. Besides, being friends with her has paid off in its own weird way: she has taught me what not to do with my life.

  the walk of shame

  I’ve spent four days at home, have done so little, but achieved so much. I am refreshed and looking forward to spending Christmas with my family after my next trip, which is another trip to Singapore. This trip’s a short one, and I get back by Christmas Eve.

  I call shorter trips like this one as ‘wheelie-bag’ trips because I can fit all my clothes into just one in-cabin bag. I usually do so much shopping that I regret not taking my suitcase and end up cramming everything into my wheelie-bag, having to then carry extra shopping bags anyway.

  Not this next trip.

  I have done enough shopping in the last month to satisfy the average woman’s shopping fantasies for a year. This time in Singapore, I intend to sit by the pool and take relaxing to whole new level.

  I pack my wheelie-bag, which takes all of about a minute, and drive to work. I actually feel safer on a plane than I do in a car, but that’s probably because I am not a very good driver.

  Every time I go to dinner parties someone wants to talk about their flight from hell and how they thought they were going to die. You can put a dozen flight attendants, with over hundred years of collective flying experience between them, in a room, and you would be lucky if you can get one story about an alarming or life-threatening flight they had been on. The reality is that air travel is very safe.

  An aircraft has back-up system after back-up system for its engines. I have been on two flights where we have lost an engine. On one occasion just after take-off – there was a loud bang, and then came the flames. The jumbo 747 made an emergency landing. There were fire engines and emergency personnel everywhere, and my emergency training kicked in effortlessly. However, although my heart was pounding and my throat went dry with anxiousness, the reality is that the plane did not behave any differently with one of its engines malfunctioning.

  For all the derision that cabin crew aim at the pilots (and we do), we are aware that their responses in those emergency situations save the day. And that’s why pilots are so respected and why they get paid the big bucks.

  Many friends have asked me if I ever think of the possibility of crashing. ‘No’ is my sure answer. I never consciously think about crashes, but I do have a morbid fascination for them. When I am away on trips I usually get ready for work with the TV playing in the background. My favourite channel is the Discovery, and nine times out of ten, the channel shows investigations of air crashes in great detail while I am getting ready for work. Thus, there I am, about to get onto an aircraft, and yet I can’t help but watch them show the flaming wreckage of a doomed flight that has slammed nose-first into the ground. Haunting images, yet I can’t look away. It is no wonder that when I take a little nap on the flight, I have the most distressing dreams about being in a plane in all sorts of trouble. However, I have never dreamt of a crash – but then again I have never slept long enough in the crew-rest area to finish a dream.

  The crew-rest bunks are not exactly luxury-hotel beds. The bunks are small with paper-thin rubber mattresses as soft as concrete. All of this is located in the tail of the plane that is hurtling through the air at breakneck speed and with high-altitude winds swirling around. In the case of the slightest turbulence, our bunks shake like we are in the middle of road-construction works; passengers sitting in their cabins will feel only the slightest vibration, on the other hand. Some people are great at sleeping through all this. I am not, and this only makes this job so much tougher.

  Ours is the only job I know where we can spend up to sixteen planned hours constantly facing and interacting with the general public. On occasions, I have done over twenty hours duty, thanks to delays or diversions.

  Helen is a school teacher, albeit part-time now. I once asked her, ‘Can you imagine teaching the same classroom of children at one go for over 20 hours, and you get only one break to freshen up?’

  She couldn’t, she said. I don’t think anyone could, I said.

  The hardest thing about the crew-rest bunks is the ‘walk of shame’ once you have finished with your nap, or at least trying to close your eyes. Often, when you enter the cabin, after being asleep in a dark and shaky environment whilst dreaming of plane disasters, you find that the lights are on. Everyone in the cabin is awake and awaiting the next meal service. Also, a queue has lined up outside the toilets, which just happen to be right next to the crew-rest area you’re stepping out from.

  Not only can you not use the busy toilets, but you need to walk through the cabin with hundreds of eyes staring into you. Make-up is usually smeared all over your face, and your hair looks like that of the lead singer from the band, The Cure. You put your head down and walk as fast as you can toward the toilets at the front of the aircraft, only to be greeted by another queue there.

  I have done the walk of shame so many times, and I still haven’t gotten used to it.

  I see that I am well ahead of time for the Singapore flight. I park my car and join my crew for the pre-flight briefing. This is the time I get to meet the crew, to renew acquaintances as well as meet new people. This is also the time when I can find out whether I can look forward to having a good trip ahead of me.

  The crew is very senior; in fact, I realise that I am the most junior one there. It is no wonder the crew are so senior – we have a seniority-driven bidding system for our rosters, and everyone wants to do this trip. It is, also, no wonder that I made this trip my priority bid. This is the trip that will get us home for Christmas, so everyone wants to do it. Another incentive is that this flight mainly involves daylight flying, and we get home Christmas Eve with minimal jetlag to contend with. Not only did I get the dream roster of having Christmas off, but also get to spend New Year’s Eve in New York – my next trip is to the Big Apple. I like my job most of the time, but right now I love it!

  The great thing about working with a senior crew is that everything onboard runs like clockwork. They deal with problems swiftly and effectively. They may sometimes be a little curt with passengers, but then if something does go wrong, they will save the day. Junior crew
s are enthusiastic, but are often a nightmare to work with.

  It is not just the lack of experience that’s the problem with the junior flyers. Working with the Y generation brings a lot more problems to the trouble. They are probably called the Y generation because they are always asking ‘why?’, also usually followed by ‘how?’, ‘what?’ and ‘where?’.

  Senior crew ask very few questions, and get their job done quickly. Also, they are a whole lot of fun. Several of the older men I work with – some even old enough to be my father – are incredibly young at mind and at heart.

  As one of the guys on this crew, who is actually older than my dad, jokes, ‘I am only twenty-two. I’ve just had an extra thirty-five years of experience.’

  They can be a little flirtatious and naughty at times, I am not offended the least; in fact I enjoy the attention. It becomes obvious that these guys are not used to working with anyone under fifty, and it is also obvious that they are just having fun. These men are experienced enough to know how far they can go.

  The only trouble with crew that have been flying thirty-plus years is that their patience with passengers is getting as thin as their hair. I understand their frustration. After years of dealing with the public in the confines of an aircraft, it only seems like all the good passengers (who are the majority) have faded into the background and all they care to see is the annoying minority. After all, these minorities do take up the majority of a flight attendant’s time.

  This flight goes effortlessly and without incident.

  Am I on the dream trip that every hostie dreams about? I pinch myself.

  We get M.T.O, which stands for Maximum Time Off. On this job, we use thousands of such acronyms. If a non-flyer were to hear us hosties having a conversation, he wouldn’t know what the hell we are talking about. Most of the emergency equipment is also referred to in acronym form; even I don’t know what some of them stand for. B.C.F, for instance. I never bothered to check what it meant. All I know is that if there is a fire, I point the B.C.F. at the fire and squeeze the trigger, and the fire will be put out.