YOU PACK IT, you lift it.” That’s the mantra of flight attendants worldwide. One of the most common misconceptions about flight attendants is that it’s our job to lift heavy passenger bags into overhead bins. This is not true. We have no problem finding a space for your bag. We’ll happily turn a few bags around to make room. We may even assist in lifting the bag. Note the emphasis on the word “assist,” as in we’re not doing it for you. We’re lifting it together. It’s a team effort. Seriously, you are a key part of Operation Bag-in-the-Bin. I’m sorry—and I’m sorry I always have to say I’m sorry—but take a little responsibility here. You pack it, you lift it. And please stop yelling at me!
Here’s the deal. What you pack and whether you check your bag or carry it on can drastically affect the outcome of your trip. Don’t make travel more stressful than it has to be. Play it safe and do what flight attendants do. When it comes to preparing for a trip, we’re experts. We travel light with just a roll-aboard and a tote bag, even when we’re packing for days at a time. The secret is rolling. Rolling instead of folding leaves clothes wrinkle-free. Our other tricks? I always coordinate my outfits around footwear—a comfy kick-around pair for exploring the destination by day and something dressy for dinner and a show at night. Undies, socks, bikinis, whatever can be wadded up, are housed inside shoes. No space goes unused. To make things simple, pack black and be done with it. So what if you wear the same outfit over and over? That’s what easy-to-pack accessories are for! Scarves and jewelry can completely change boring black into something fab. And whatever gets left behind becomes the perfect excuse to go shopping for something new! On vacation we get to know the locals at a Laundromat. What better place to read a guidebook or ask around for a great place to eat?
Of course, I did not know any of this in 1995 when I signed a clipboard and a FedEx guy handed over an official-looking letter from the airline. I’d been waiting for it since my interview two weeks earlier. I ripped open the envelope and read, “Congratulations!” My heart began to beat faster.
The letter welcomed class 23 to flight attendant training—round two in less than a year for me. Upon completing a seven-and-a-half-week course, I, along with two pieces of luggage—wait, did that say… two pieces? I read the sentence again. Two pieces. And it was written in big black bold print, so I knew the airline meant business. If that wasn’t bad enough, neither bag could weigh more than eighty pounds, and they would both accompany me on an “exciting journey” to a new crew base the moment I completed training. No time to go home and repack. If you’ve ever had to pack two plus months’ worth of clothing into two suitcases, you probably know the exact feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. How the heck could I possibly whittle my entire life down to 160 pounds? I read on. Did the airline really expect me to memorize more than five hundred airport city codes before training even began? How was I going to fit that in when I had so much—er, little—packing to do?
I sat down on my closet floor, staring up at my clothes. I couldn’t decide what to take. I had no idea what I might need at a crew base. I didn’t even know where in the country my base would be. So I ended up doing what any other twenty-four-year-old might do. I threw it all in: rubber flip-flops and furry snow boots, strapless sundresses and cashmere sweaters, a little black number and some workout clothes—you know, just in case. Who knew what kind of excitement awaited me? I threw in some costume jewelry for good measure, then plopped down on top of the first bag and tried… to zip… it shut! I couldn’t get it closed. Frowning, I imagined myself passing through the pearly gates of the flight academy. A larger-than-life flight instructor would place my suitcases on an industrial-size scale and send me straight back home to Mom and Dad. Because that’s exactly where I’d end up if I didn’t make it through. I took out the snow boots and tried again. I removed the flip-flops and still I couldn’t get the thing shut. One less sweater—make that two—and I was finally good to go. My mother promised to box up what I couldn’t get inside and mail it to me later.
Three weeks after my flight attendant interview, with two thousand borrowed dollars in the bank (the amount suggested by the airline for incidentals, even though room and board were covered), I said good-bye to my old life and walked onto a small campus setting just five miles away from a major U.S. airport. I felt nervous and insecure, but my hair looked good, my makeup looked good, and I looked good. That’s all that mattered.
Though my luggage toppled over every five steps, I somehow managed to pass through the flight academy’s automatic doors without a hitch. Once inside, the place looked like nothing special, just a regular hotel lobby. A check-in counter was to my right, and sofas and wingback chairs were scattered about the open room. Straight ahead, through floor-to-ceiling windows, I made out a deserted swimming pool, a volleyball net, and a barbecue pit. To my left, I spotted a bar. A bar! Who knew training was going to be so much fun? A winding staircase on the right led to a landing overlooking the room, which was slowly beginning to fill with people.
“Excuse me,” I whispered, my palms sweating, as I made my way through small cliques of future colleagues. At the desk, I checked in, then slapped a hello my name is heather sticker across my chest. A shiny gold key and a packet full of papers slid across the counter, and I turned back to the room, not exactly sure what to do next. As I looked around, trying to play it cool, I realized everyone in the room looked amazing. A stunning black-haired, ruby-lipped, perfectly pale woman walked toward me, and suddenly I felt even less special.
“Hi,” she said, flashing a cheerful smile. “I’m Georgia.”
Georgia, it turned out, was a real-life beauty pageant runner-up from Louisiana who used words like “fixin’,” as in, “I’m fixin’ to get a drink. Ya want one?”
“Sure!” I parked my bags against the wall.
At the bar I ordered a Diet Coke. We moved back to the lobby to sit, and while we talked, we watched in awe as people continued to check in. It looked like there were at least fifty of us milling about. Like so many of my glamorous soon-to-be best friends, Georgia had always dreamed about becoming a flight attendant. She wouldn’t let anything stop her from making that dream a reality, not even a jealous boyfriend, who, I quickly learned, had just moved to North Carolina.
“I told him I’d see him before he knew it, but he ain’t happy, not one little bit. Men!” she snorted, and then took a sip of Diet Dr Pepper.
Georgia was not alone. All of us had left someone behind: family, friends, loved ones. I’d only been dating Paul for six months, and he’d actually been more than supportive of my new career choice. Probably because it gave him the opportunity to work around the clock in order to get both his landscaping and car-detailing businesses off the ground. To be perfectly honest, though, I had been looking for a way out of the relationship for a while now.
“It’s just that he’s really sweet and I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” I told Georgia. I made a face. “I’m not big on confrontation.”
“And that, sweetie, is why the airline hired you!”
I didn’t understand it then, but Georgia may have been on to something. At that moment, all I knew was that we were spilling our life stories and we’d only known each other for ten minutes! Already we were the best of friends.
“You know, we oughtta room together!” Georgia said.
I was thrilled and relieved. But it turned out that we weren’t allowed to pick our roommates; they were preassigned. I promised to meet Georgia for dinner after we each dropped our bags in our rooms. I wasn’t sure how long that would take her to accomplish. By the time I arrived, I’d thinned my luggage down to seventy-eight pounds even, but Georgia’s version of packing light seemed to involve eight humongous bags that weighed about three tons. Each.
With a room key pressed firmly in the palm of my hand, I put on my brightest first-class smile and tried as best I could to roll my bags into the elevator without crashing into anyone—mission unaccomplished. Two floors up, I stood in front of my new home, slid the key into the keyhole, and took a deep breath. The moment I cracked the door open, I was blown away by one big, “Howdy! I’m Linda.”
I stood speechless in the hallway, taking Linda in: teased bouffant, orange tan, turquoise jewelry, teensy-tiny blue-jean skirt, electric blue cowboy boots, matching blue eye shadow. My roommate, the person with whom I would spend the next two months in a space that looked to be the size of a small college dorm room, was a cowgirl. Well, the word “girl” might be a little misleading. Linda actually looked older than my mother. Yeehaw.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Heather,” I finally got out as I reluctantly entered and plopped down on a hard twin bed. “Guess this one’s mine.”
Linda picked up the phone and I reminded myself not to judge a book by its cover. But it was just so hard not to as I noted cowboy boots in every color lining the closet floor. While I tried to make do with half of a tiny closet, I overheard Linda saying to someone that this was her second chance at life. That got me wondering, what went wrong the first time around? As I hung up seventy-eight pounds of casual business attire, the dress code for the flight academy, I listened to Linda telling at least ten different people she loved them. When she hung up the phone, I thought I saw her wipe away a tear.
“You okay?” I asked.
Nervously she laughed. “Sorry. Those were my grandkids. I miss them so.”
Grandkids! No way. My cowgirl roommate was also a grandmother? Could we have had less in common?
On any good reality show, the first exciting event is the makeover episode. That first day of training was all about grooming. It’s common knowledge that flight attendants must be willing to do two things: cut their hair and go anywhere. Well, I have crazy hair. It’s half wavy and half frizzy. Weather, water, styling products, and the power level of the hair dryer all make a huge difference when it comes to looking presentable. Since I hadn’t wanted to have any problems at training, I’d gotten my long blond locks chopped at a professional salon before an amateur hired by the airline could get a hold of me. The result, in my opinion, looked amazing. But because frizzies on a flight attendant are unacceptable, regardless of humidity, I was schooled on how to smooth and tame my unruly hair by creating a classic French twist with three hundred bobby pins and an entire can of hairspray. It looked pretty. My scalp hurt. I kept my mouth shut.
Georgia, of course, soared through Grooming 101 without having to change a thing. Our instructors used words like “beautiful, gorgeous, so graceful,” to describe her, practically trailing her with a standing ovation. Flawless, a poster child for the airline, she had mastered the appearance of perfection early on in her pageant career. Why nobody hired her to run the grooming department, I don’t know. The girl could work wonders with a bit of gloss, fake lashes, and a push-up bra. The instructors constantly instructed the rest of us to take note of the way she lined her lips, highlighted her cheeks, arched her brows, accented her eyes, and wore her hair. Some female classmates began to resent the adulation thrust upon Georgia, while others, particularly the men in class, adored her, taking each and every beauty tip to heart.
Linda, on the other hand, got a complete makeover. No one was surprised, not even Linda. We’d been divided into groups of ten and had been escorted to a salon on campus. Well, when I say “salon,” I mean a room at the end of a long hallway that felt more like a mini cosmetology school than any salon I’d ever been to. Linda was the last one to take a seat in front of the brightly lit mirror. Though her jaw remained tense throughout the hour-long ordeal, she did not complain about the transformation, not once, not even when the frighteningly plastic grooming technician in charge wiped away the frosted blue coloring shellacked across her lids and demanded she never wear that horrid color again. Mauve replaced blue. Her hair was de-poofed. Glitzy earrings were exchanged for something more conservative, no bigger than a quarter in size. Because we were only allowed to wear two rings per hand, Linda removed four gaudy hunks of gold. As for shoes, cowboy boots don’t work well with the uniform, so Linda took a taxi to a nearby mall and purchased something sensible, in leather, with at least an inch heel—no straps or buckles allowed.
“Don’t forget that appearances are to be maintained at the flight academy from this day forth,” announced the instructor before dismissing us at the end of the day.
“Even after hours and on weekends?” We all turned to see who dared ask such a question. Joseph, a big guy who looked like he might be more comfortable wearing sweats, smiled sheepishly.
“Even after hours and on weekends,” stated the instructor, which would come to echo in my head late at night when I’d literally run to the gym, ducking in doorways whenever I thought I heard someone coming for fear I’d get caught wearing running shorts and a T-shirt outside the workout room. I had no idea how to get there without breaking the rules.
“Ladies!” one of our instructors would call out often whenever he’d enter the classroom. Back in the day he had probably been a catch. But the years had taken their toll, particularly where his head was concerned. He barely had any hair left. Khaki Dockers and a polo shirt with the company’s logo embroidered across the pocket, the official flight instructor uniform, paired with white running sneakers didn’t do him any justice, either. The first time we heard him say it, we sat staring blankly, eagerly awaiting his next word. It never came. He stood behind the podium slowly scanning the room, making eye contact with each and every one of us. He didn’t look pleased. At one point I wondered if he’d forgotten what he wanted to say. But we quickly came to learn what it meant. We would frantically and in unison dig compact mirrors out of our purses, check our lips and reapply, even if we really didn’t need to. If the guilty party did not make amends—now, as in right now—she’d get dismissed from class forever. Lipstick, at flight attendant training, was serious business. It had to be worn at all times.
“Why?” asked a classmate who had dared not to wear the color my airline had recommended that year, Clinique red. Instead she wore one that looked a lot like, well, no shade at all, a glossy nude. I liked it. But I knew better than to wear it.
“So passengers can read your lips during an emergency,” said an instructor, matter-of-factly. None of us knew if he was serious.
The following day, Glossy Nude didn’t show up for class. We weren’t surprised by her sudden departure. We had no idea if she had quit or if she’d been kicked out. Most of us didn’t even think twice about it. Well, except for Georgia, who came to the conclusion that women’s lib had gotten the best of Glossy Nude. She made a group of us promise not to let it happen to us. I agreed, even if I disagreed about the unflattering shade of red that had been chosen for my pale skin.
Lipstick turned out to be the least of my worries. First off, living with my roommate was a challenge on its own. On top of all our obvious differences, I quickly discovered that Linda constantly apologized for everything. And I mean everything.
“Sorry,” she’d whisper into the dark when the muffled buzz of her alarm clock beeped under the scratchy sheets. Class wouldn’t start for another three hours, yet Linda was up and at ’em anyway, apologizing again for throwing back the covers too loudly. After hopping out of bed, she’d tiptoe across the worn carpet. Once inside the bathroom she’d shut the door, and then, and only then, would she dare flip on the florescent light, so as not to bother me—her words, not mine. Which were always followed by “sorry,” whenever I told her not to worry about it.
Before my own alarm could jolt me out of bed, Linda would be long gone, already seated at a long table in the cafeteria with two other “mature” women from our class. They’d endlessly quiz each other over weak coffee, dry toast, and runny eggs, courtesy of the airline. Me, I rarely ate breakfast. There wasn’t enough time to eat. Okay, the truth is, I couldn’t drag myself out of bed early enough for breakfast. When it came to sleep, every second counted. God forbid any of us dozed off in class during a long, drawn-out monotone lecture over the correct way to organize a beverage cart or the importance of saying hello and good-bye to passengers using a different greeting each time. It became a game of who could go the longest without repeating. Hello, good morning, how are you, welcome aboard, nice to have you, thanks for joining us, good to see you, morning, hi, good-bye, see ya later, thanks for flying with us, looking forward to seeing you again, have a good evening, see you next time, bye-bye, good night. Get caught with your eyes closed during any of this, and you’d get sent packing. Thank God for the vending machine stocked full of Mountain Dew. I guzzled gallons of the stuff in order to stay awake.
Falling asleep in class wasn’t the only way to obtain walking papers. Being late resulted in the same thing. This is why flight attendants have perfected the art of power walking. If for whatever reason we weren’t in our seats come class time, no matter how good the excuse, we were instructed to leave our training manuals beside the locked classroom door and immediately return to wherever we’d originally come from. None of us wanted to go back home. We were all here to fly away! But because the airplane doesn’t wait, neither would our instructors, who always smiled as they explained the dire consequences. I took notes. The way they treated us was an art form all to itself, and I figured the ability to be so politely condescending would come in handy at 30,000 feet. Or maybe it was 35,000 feet? I didn’t know for sure yet, but it wouldn’t be long before we’d all learn that cruising altitude depends on several factors, including weight of the aircraft, fuel, humidity, air temperature, winds, turbulence, and air traffic.
Given how crazy everything else at training seemed to be, I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised when our food service procedure instructor turned to the chalkboard and started drawing out football plays. Well, it looked that way at first! Dumbfounded, we just sat in our seats staring at the board as he drew lines to represent aisles, boxes for carts, and arrows to show movement. And every plane seemed to have at least two different “plays” for us to memorize.
The way in which we were instructed to serve passengers depended first on the airplane. There are “two-class” and “three-class” flights, as well as three different services. A two-class flight has a first class and coach cabin. (Imagine two big boxes with several smaller boxes inside.) A three-class flight includes business class, but here’s where it gets confusing. A three-class flight might only provide a two-class service if the business-class seats have been sold as coach seats. It happens. (Two sets of three small boxes lined up side by side with six arrows pointing forward and back.) First class isn’t created equal, either. What a lot of passengers don’t realize is on most two-class flights, passengers get a business-class service in what is considered the first-class cabin. And while first-class service on a long-haul, three-class flight is exceptional, it often bears no resemblance, other than in name, to its counterpart on a two-class flight to Oklahoma City where the flying time is short and the ticket prices are cheap. (Five small boxes inside one big box. No arrows.)
Many smaller airlines only fly one type of aircraft, so their training, I imagine, is fairly simple. At my airline we work on all different kinds of airplanes, so we had to be trained on each one of them: F100, S80, 727, 757, 767, MD11, DC10, A300. We took on a new airplane every week. Each aircraft type is a completely different configuration in terms of number of passengers, lavatories, and galleys; the use and location of emergency and medical equipment; the operation of window and door exits; and how to command an evacuation. Over time an airline might retire its aging fleet and replace one type of aircraft with something newer. Flight attendants will then have to fly back to the academy on a day off to be trained. If flight attendants don’t get qualified on a particular aircraft, they are not allowed to work it. And because they’re unable to operate and command an evacuation if necessary, they are not considered “jump-seat qualified,” which means they will not be allowed to take a jump seat on a flight that’s full when they’re trying to use their travel passes to go on vacation or get to work.
Each aircraft galley is completely different when it comes to size and storage, so the type of plane affects the service. The 737 first-class galley is so small that a can of soda can’t stand up on the counter because an oven is located right over it. Some flight attendants might be inclined to pull out a cart, park it in front of the first-class entry door, and use the top as extra counter space. We didn’t learn this technique in training because the airline didn’t want us to block an exit, even in flight when it’s physically impossible to open the door. I don’t get it, either. The DC10 has the exact opposite problem. The airplane has a monster galley that first class, business, and coach all share. Carts are stored underneath the galley, so a flight attendant has to take a one-person elevator down to where the carts are kept and to spend the remainder of the flight sending up the correct cart at the appropriate time. You can imagine how popular this assignment is with new hires. Antisocial senior flight attendants love it.
The easiest way for a flight attendant to know which service to provide is to open up all the food carts and take a peek inside. A vegetable crudité after takeoff or salad toppings that include something other than a sprinkle of parmesan cheese and a choice of dressing is a sign it’s a true first-class service. But during training, when we finally got to practice what we’d learned on a mocked-up section of an airplane galley, the cart was empty! There was no way to guess the service when no food or beverage was allowed on the trainer. With only a single empty cart, an empty coffee pot (to serve both decaf and regular coffee, as well as tea), an insert of empty soda cans, and half a stack of plastic and Styrofoam cups to work with, I placed a real napkin down on a real tray table and asked a couple of classmates with opened flight manuals resting in their laps if they’d like something to drink. The instructors scribbled notes down on their clipboards as we made small talk while I served a pretend vodka tonic with a twist of pretend lime. Nobody complained about the service, or even the food! In our minds it tasted delicious.
On long-haul and international flights the service in the premium cabins is elaborate. There are predeparture drinks, appetizers, hot towels, salads, entrees, an assortment of breads and wines, desserts, and more. In first class, we were taught to use a three-tiered cart for amenities such as magazines and newspapers, as well as for salad and dessert delivery. Imagine my surprise to learn that our tiny drink carts at Sun Jet were really three-tiered dessert carts at other airlines. No wonder it had taken forever to do a service! It turned out that at a normal airline, the dainty silver cart was supposed to be accompanied with the “horse shoe” method for serving appetizers and desserts to first-class passengers. This meant we served one side of the first-class cabin, pulled the cart up, and then served the other side. Drinks and entrees were to be hand-delivered. In business class, drinks and entrees were also hand-delivered, while salads and desserts were to be served from a regular cart, not the three-tiered cart.
In coach, regular carts were used for everything. On most flights in coach, we were taught to move the carts forward-aft (front to back), but sometimes an aft-forward service worked best. That is until the aft-forward service was cut out altogether a year or two later—in coach. In first and business classes it still remains. The direction of the service depends on the flight number (even or odd) and the direction we’re flying (north-south or east-west). On shorter flights using larger aircraft, we learned to converge two carts if we wanted to finish the service. One cart would work aft-forward while the other worked forward-aft until they met in the middle in order to make the service quicker. (After 9/11 we stopped doing this, because having enough flight attendants on board to work two carts simultaneously in coach became so rare.) Then there were the “wide-body” (two-aisle) versus “narrow-body” (single-aisle) flights. On the wide-bodies—767s, MD11s, DC10s, and A300s—the instructors pounded into our brains that we must keep the carts as close together across the aisle from each other as possible. Not always an easy task to accomplish when some crew members were faster at serving than others.
Successfully passing a test on one aircraft didn’t mean we had a clue what to do on another. Take, for instance, the emergency exits. There are single slides, double slides, tail cones, and wings. Even on a single aircraft the emergency doors and windows operate differently. The commands one classmate had to yell while at a window exit were completely different from the ones I yelled while at a door on the same plane. We were tested on a mocked-up section of a plane that looked exactly like it did in real life—except that the first-class entry doors were about eight rows from the window exits, which were about ten rows from the rear exit doors. This became even more confusing and difficult because there were always at least three of us being tested on evacuation drills at the same time, one of us positioned at each exit. We had to remain focused. The best way to do it was to outscream one another. To add to the stress, our instructors would throw in things like a fire or an exit door that wouldn’t open or a slide that wouldn’t inflate or a passenger who was too afraid to jump. Then we’d have to break into a whole new set of commands and procedures. We could score an A, B, C, or D on the computer tests that covered medical, safety, or security, but when it came to an evacuation, it was pretty much pass or fail. If we looked out an exit window in the wrong direction to make sure our pretend slide had indeed inflated, buh-bye! If we pointed to the back of the plane at the pretend engine and told passengers on the ground to run “that way,” the wrong way, adios! Forgetting to position ourselves between the jump seat and the fuselage wall while the slide inflates with air and a pretend frantic passenger eager to escape a smoke-filled cabin might push us out to our death. One wrong word, one slip of the tongue, one teeny-tiny mistake and we were immediately told to stop without an explanation. After three strikes, we were out for good.
Linda would get so worked up before her drills she’d start to feel ill. But medical training is the only thing that frightened the heck out of me. I’ll never forget the day our most laid-back instructor placed an infant doll on top of a table in front of the classroom and told us about the time a passenger rang her call light because her child was turning blue. Our instructor grabbed the naked plastic doll and checked for breathing. Resting its back on the length of her arm with her hand cradling the baby’s head, she then flipped the doll over, balancing it on her other arm that rested on her thigh and began banging it with the palm of her hand—whop, whop, whop! Then she flipped the baby back over and using two fingers pushed hard on its scratched and discolored chest three times. We watched in silence while she flipped and banged, flipped and pushed, a long blond ponytail flipping along with it, until whatever the baby was choking on came out. Our instructor cradled the doll in her arms and told us that while she may have saved the doll’s life, on her flight she hadn’t been successful. Another instructor took over when it looked like she might cry. After we each took turns practicing the Heimlich maneuver on an infant, we learned what to do on children, adults, and pregnant women. Next up was CPR. Dozens of lifelike dummies lined the floor. Our classroom resembled a horror movie, or even worse, a morgue. With the heel of my hand I pushed as hard as I could on a plastic chest that barely moved and counted to sixty, my partner giving two breaths, for what seemed like hours.
It didn’t matter how many times I went over the conscious and breathing versus unconscious and not breathing checklist, I just couldn’t seem to grasp it. So I organized a study group with other classmates who were having trouble. We met after dinner in a hallway to role-play medical scenarios. Georgia played the unconscious woman. A purple hair scrunchie wrapped around her wrist represented a medical bracelet. She had diabetes. Linda became a nurse after someone suggested we page for a doctor—but we came to find out Linda wasn’t really a medical professional, because when we asked to see her credentials she didn’t have any. Sneaky! While Joseph ran to get oxygen and the medical kit, Linda, who had transformed back into a flight attendant, called the cockpit to report what was going on. I could handle nosebleeds, air sickness, diabetic comas, and seizures, but the thought of losing a passenger freaked me out. Just dragging Georgia’s lifeless body over an armrest and into the aisle for CPR seemed daunting. And would I really be physically capable of dragging a grown man by the ankles to an emergency door to get him down a slide in the event of an evacuation? I’d take faulty hydraulics or an engine fire over a medical scenario any day.
Even though I knew we were only role-playing, it felt real and it always felt like we were about to run out of time. For me, flight attendant training was more difficult than four years of college because so much information was thrown at us in seven and a half weeks. What we were taught wasn’t difficult, but the program had been specifically designed to wear us down. The airline needed to know how we might react in a number of less-than-perfect scenarios in order to give us a taste of what flying would really be like… and also as a way to get rid of those who couldn’t hack it. So they pushed us to our limits, mentally and physically, filtering out the weak along the way. As we grew more and more exhausted, we were expected to absorb tons of information that had to be repeated verbatim. Procedures had to be done in step-by-step order. Late-night study groups were followed by early-morning drills. My adrenalin pumped nonstop for weeks. Imagine being on American Idol during Hollywood week, but instead of memorizing a song from the 1970s, you have to know the difference between dozens of weapons so that if you spot one in flight you can correctly communicate what it is with the cockpit. Instead of practicing Motown dance moves, we had to practice what to do in the event of ditching over water, a decompression, and planned and unplanned emergency landings. And just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the paranoia set in.
It began the day we sat down to learn about the basics of first-class service. We were being shown the proper way to set a tray table, pour a fine bottle of wine using a drip cloth, balance six wineglasses on a linen-lined silver tray, and serve caviar without dinging the fine china with a silver spoon. At one point, someone noticed that Joseph had gone missing. I hoped he didn’t have something contagious—that was the last thing I needed. During lunch break a few classmates went to check on him, but when they knocked on the door nobody answered. And when Joe’s roommate entered their room that night, Joe’s half was totally and completely empty. It was as if nobody had ever lived on the right-hand side!
We had questions. There were no answers. Initially, I wondered if Joseph’s weight had done him in. He was a bit—okay, a lot—heavier than the rest of us. Georgia thought it had to be all his joking around. In class, Joe was always making us laugh. He was hilarious! Linda believed it had something to do with his sexuality. Joe did seem to enjoy showing off his feminine side. But I don’t blame him—no one looked more glamorous in an evening gown than Joanne, his alter ego. We never did figure out what happened to him. Right then and there I made a mental note to begin collecting phone numbers of classmates I liked—just in case.
Slowly, slowly, bit by bit, we dwindled down from a class of sixty to forty-five. We never saw anyone leave—people were there one minute, gone the next. Is it any wonder that many of us came to the conclusion that our rooms, the bathroom stalls, and even the salt and pepper shakers were bugged? The instructors had to be watching our every move and listening to our every word. Why else did classmates suddenly disappear for no reason during a five-minute bathroom break? What made it even more disturbing was that the good ones, classmates who would make perfect flight attendants, were not immune. One minute we’d all be sitting together discussing the different types of hijackers or how to use an information card and a couple of soda-soaked blankets when encountering a bomb, and the next minute—poof! Another classmate was gone. Luggage and all. Not a word. Not a note. Not a mention of their name ever again. Of course we were too afraid to ask our instructors what happened for fear that we’d be next. Instead we silently sat in our seats, eyes darting in the direction of the empty chair as soon as we realized someone else had been booted out. Oh, sure, there were those who deserved to go, like the two who got caught fondling each other under the table during a what-to-do-during-a-hostage-situation movie, but for the most part none of it made sense. We never knew who would be next.
Four weeks into training I thought for sure it would be me. I had just exited the ladies’ room with two minutes to spare when a stranger approached and asked for help. He said he was lost. I began to panic. Remember, the airplane doesn’t wait for anyone. That includes me. On the other hand, customer service is extremely important to the airline. It had been drilled into our heads from day one that if we weren’t able to assist a passenger, we were to find someone who could. The clock was ticking. I could try to help the lost soul find his way, but then I most certainly would have to leave my books by the locked classroom door. I also could apologize quickly, giving him the brush-off, which is exactly what I wanted to do, but what kind of customer service was that? It had to be a setup. Why else were there no right answers? I didn’t know what to do!
But then, like a gift from above, a janitor appeared behind a cleaning cart. I sent her telepathic messages—look, over here, help, save me, please! Amazingly, she turned around and asked if everything was okay. Quickly I explained the situation, that the guy was lost and my class was about to begin and I couldn’t be late—and then I just took off sprinting down the hall (which is, of course, another flight attendant no-no). I slid into my desk with about one second to spare… and spent the rest of the day looking over my shoulder, still not convinced that I’d escaped.
Just when we couldn’t take it anymore, when it became apparent to those in charge that a mutiny was moments away, something amazing happened: our instructors ordered us to gather our belongings and meet in a room down the hall.
“What now?” I mumbled, grabbing my two-pound flight manual and standing up.
“I don’t know how much more I can take,” said Linda as a group of us walked down the hall together.
“Why do they have to torture us like this?” asked Georgia. The words were barely out of her mouth as we entered the room and spotted along the wall, lined up in neat little rows, brand-new black suitcases on wheels.
“Ohmahgawd,” Georgia exclaimed.
Ohmahgawd was right, because the room had been sectioned off into four stations, and in each corner, right next to a full-length mirror, stood a woman with a tape measure around her neck. I swallowed hard. There was a long silver rack housing navy blue dresses, skirts, pants, jackets, and vests! What a wonderful sight to behold.
“Next week each of you will go on a work trip,” the instructor announced. I could not believe my ears. I almost pinched myself just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I nearly broke down and cried. I could have kissed each and every one of my instructors that very moment, calling to mind a psychological response known as Stockholm syndrome. Stockholm syndrome happens when abducted hostages (flight attendant trainees), begin to show signs of loyalty to the hostage-taker (flight instructors) regardless of the danger, risk, or torture in which they have been placed. The shift occurs in captives when they are shown simple acts of kindness. Take it from me, there is nothing in the world quite like viewing yourself in a flight attendant uniform for the very first time. This is the only possible explanation for why I actually thanked my instructors when we learned that the navy blue polyester getup, all $800 of it, would be deducted from our first couple of paychecks. (That included a black roll-aboard and tote, a navy blue Coach-style purse, a red sweater, a blue vest, a blazer, a trench coat, two skirts, six white blouses, a dress, and two pinstriped toppers, a.k.a. aprons. You had to order pants separately. It took twenty months to pay it off in $20 increments.)
Stockholm syndrome kicked in again on my first work trip, with just three weeks to go until graduation. The class had been divided into groups of three, and each group had been scheduled to work “a turn.” That’s a trip that leaves a city and returns to the same city on the same day. Really, we were just on board to observe. That is, our instructors informed us, unless the crew allowed us to help serve food and drinks or pick up trash. In the unlikely event that something went wrong in flight, we were told to take a seat and stay out of the way of the working crew.
Nashville, Kansas City, Fort Lauderdale, Detroit, Salt Lake City, I honestly do not recall where my training flight took us. I was too excited about donning the uniform for the very first time to care. What I do remember is that we trainees were giddy with excitement, fresh from the charm farm, wearing uniform pieces that still needed tailoring. The hem of my skirt went past my knees. The working crew was a completely different story. They looked tired and frayed around the edges, and they seemed less than enthused when the gate agent escorted us down the jet bridge and announced our presence over the PA. Without discussing it with me, my two classmates decided they would assist the flight attendants working in coach and I would stay in first class. While I already had experience working for an airline, you may recall that it was nothing even close to first-class service, to put it politely. Even though I wasn’t supposed to be doing anything, I was still scared I might screw it up.
“Don’t be nervous,” said the flight attendant whose job it was to show me the ropes. When she laughed it sounded more like a cackle. She popped open a can of club soda and poured. “The only way you’re going to learn this job is by jumping in and doing it.” After stabbing a slice of lime with a red stir stick, she balanced it across the glass and placed the drink on a silver tray. “This goes to 2B,” she said, handing it to me.
When I came back to the galley and passed the empty tray to her, she said, “So what do you say you do the service by yourself?”
I gulped. “Really?” Because really, this did not sound like a good idea.
“Why not? Here’s a list of drink orders and meal preferences. Inside the carts you’ll find everything you need. I’ll watch and make sure you do it right. If you need anything, just ask.” She plopped down hard on the jump seat, fishing a book, Smart Women/Foolish Choices, out of her bag.
As she quietly read, I did things I’m not quite sure I should have been doing, like the entire service. I even “armed” and “disarmed” the door, which required me to get down on my hands and knees on a dirty wet floor to attach and detach the evacuation slide to the door. The other two trainees never came up to check on me. Maybe they were too afraid they’d have to do something other than assist with picking up trash—er, service items, as we have to say. After the flight I profusely thanked the smart woman who’d made the foolish choice, based solely on the book she read, for allowing me to do her job—a job I had not been paid to do—and raved about how nice she was to anyone who would listen, except my instructors, of course. I didn’t want to get in trouble.
We had a total of two work trips during training, a narrow-body and a wide-body, so that we would be at least a little familiar with what to expect once on the line. Unfortunately for me, the wide-body is just a hazy blue memory because that week I came down with a terrible sinus infection. An instructor was kind enough to pull me aside before my flight and suggest I take cold medicine before, during, and after my trip. Drowsy from practically overdosing on Sudafed, I barely made it through the drink service before one of the flight attendants noticed how badly I felt and ordered me to take a seat in business class. I vaguely remember waking up in the dark between two well-dressed passengers and finding a slice of cheese cake on the tray table in front of me. I took a bite and fell back to sleep. When I woke up again the cake was gone and my table had been stowed for landing. Thankfully the crew was kind enough to give me an over-the-top rave review of a job well done. Otherwise that would have been the end of the line for me.
With just a week and a half before graduation an instructor walked into the classroom, picked up a piece of chalk, and wrote, “Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, New York, and Orlando” across the board. My stomach tightened. Then he turned to the class and said, “These are the crew bases that are now available and they’ll be awarded in order of seniority.”
As I’ve mentioned, seniority at an airline is everything, and it’s determined first by class graduation date. But within each class, it is assigned by date of birth. This meant that Linda was the most senior person in our class, I fell somewhere in the middle, and Georgia ranked right behind me.
“Write down your name on a piece of paper,” instructed our instructor. “Under your name write your seniority number. Under that, list the cities in order of preference—one being the city you most desire.”
Linda, I knew, wanted to be based in Texas, but since that was not one of our options, I had no idea where she might request. Georgia’s boyfriend lived in North Carolina, so I assumed she’d choose Orlando to be close. Whether or not she could “hold it” was an entirely different story, since there were only fourteen slots available for Orlando. San Francisco, one of the most senior bases in the system, where the average flight attendant had twenty-five years of experience, had only seven spots open. Those would mostly like go to our most senior classmates who already lived there. Boston, Chicago, and Denver were too cold to even consider. I kinda-sorta wanted to experience the Big Apple, just for the sake of experiencing it, even though I had no desire to live there long-term. Also, remember my boyfriend? I still hadn’t gotten around to breaking up with him. I know, I know. So I made New York my first choice, a city located far, far away from Dallas, far, far away from him. Because New York was also a base with by far the most open spots available, I knew I’d be able to pair up with a few other new flight attendants. We could share an apartment and learn the ins and outs of the job together. It was also the most junior crew base in the system, so it offered the best trips for a new hire to work. Not to mention it had some of the best international flying systemwide. I couldn’t wait to see Paris!
The very next day, nine days before graduation, we got our crew base assignments. I was headed to New York City! So was Georgia. Not everyone was as excited as we were—an hour after the announcement, a couple of upset classmates who were not awarded their first choice quit. The day before graduation, five classmates were sent home. Five! Rumor has it they got caught partying in their room. That was the most we had ever lost in a week. Needless to say, it was an emotional time, which is why graduation is just a blur.
One thing I do remember well is what happened to Linda. Talk about a tear-jerker. In every flight attendant class there’s one classmate who struggles the entire way through training. If they do actually manage to graduate and walk across the stage in front of an auditorium filled with family and friends there to witness the pinning of silver wings to a blue lapel, they do so by the skin of their teeth. But they also do so with the love and support of every single classmate bringing down the house with a standing ovation. That person in my class, the one with the clumpy Tammy Faye Bakker lashes, was the woman I had absolutely dreaded rooming with our first day. How could I have known she’d wind up working harder than anyone I’d ever meet to achieve a goal she refused to give up on no matter how many people called it ridiculous or how many years continued to pass by? And she would do so at a stage in life when too many women give up dreaming altogether! That alone was admirable. I was too young and immature at the time we met to realize how truly amazing she was. In the beginning all I’d seen were shoulder-length dangly earrings and hot pink frosted lipstick and wondered, Why, why me? Why do I have to end up with the crazy old lady? Crazy old lady wound up not being so crazy after all. In fact, she became my inspiration later on in life whenever I met an obstacle that seemed impossible to climb. Now it is I who must thank Linda for putting up with me!
When it was almost my turn to finally take the stage, an instructor took a ruler to my hair to make sure it was no longer than six inches from the collar. Close, she said, before moving on to the next person with questionable locks. I crossed the stage and an instructor pinned my wings on me. Then I joined the others who were standing off to the side and clapping. I looked at them proudly. We had made it through. Afterward I saw my mother, father, and sister for the first time in weeks. Together we laughed, cried, took a few pictures, and then, an hour later, it all came to an end. An instructor announced that it was time to go. The bus was waiting.
“Guess this is it,” I said. My mother wiped her eyes. My dad gave me a hug. As I walked out the door my sister made me promise to call her as soon as I landed. It almost felt as if I were being sent off to war. I took a deep breath and climbed onto the airport bus behind Georgia. This was it.