RESERVE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS have no life. None. Zero. Zilch. We sit around in our pajamas half the day waiting for crew schedule to call, and complaining about being on reserve to anyone who will listen. The other half of the day is spent explaining that we are in fact working, even though we are not actually on an airplane, since we’re stuck at home and unable to do what we’d really like to do. This explains why the sock and underwear drawer get a complete makeover—twice—each reserve month. And nothing goes better with reserve than the Weather Channel. We’re always tuned in. When there’s bad weather, crews go illegal, and when crews are unable to fly, reserve flight attendants get called out to cover their trips. The only thing good about being on reserve is we might get to work a trip we would otherwise never fly in a million years. Senior flight attendants hold the best trips, but when they call in sick, flight attendants on reserve fill in.
Here’s how reserve works. Bidding is the act of requesting a line. A line is a sequence of trips in consecutive order flight attendants (well, those not on reserve) are offered to work each month. At my airline we are offered more than two hundred lines. Each line has anywhere from three to ten positions to work, depending on the aircraft type. Lines are awarded by company seniority. This is why the best trips, flights to Asia and Europe, are always staffed with the most senior crew, and why the ground staff in Honolulu have been known to ask if the wheelchairs meeting the flight are for passengers or flight attendants. If a flight attendant has a seniority number of 200, that flight attendant should bid for at least two hundred positions to make sure she doesn’t get a “miss bid” and be awarded a line she didn’t want.
While nonreserve flight attendants choose from lines of trips, reserve flight attendants choose from lines of days off. Line holders can get ten to twenty days off a month, depending on their seniority. Reserve flight attendants on average only get ten days off. Days off are grouped together in three or four blocks per month, and each block can range anywhere from one to five days. When you’re on reserve, the airline can (and will) assign a trip at any time of day or night. Sleep, something most people take for granted, becomes a guessing game since you never know when you’ll have to fly next—crack of dawn or all night long.
When crew schedule, also known just as scheduling, contacts a flight attendant, the flight attendant has fifteen minutes to return the call and accept the trip. Otherwise she is assigned a “missed trip.” Missing an assignment more than once can result in company action. If you’re on probation like Georgia and I were, it can lead directly to termination. After flight attendants are assigned a trip, they have at least two hours to get to the airport and sign in on a computer in flight operations. Sign-in must occur an hour before the flight departs. If it doesn’t, a reserve flight attendant working airport standby will be sent to cover the trip. Standby flight attendants spend hours sitting at the airport waiting around in case a flight attendant, even another reserve flight attendant, doesn’t make sign-in on time. Being paid to hang out might sound like fun, but it can be draining, especially after sitting standby for five hours and then getting called out to work a five-hour trip ten minutes before you thought you’d be heading home. And since flight attendants on standby (or reserve) never know where they’re going or how long they’ll be gone, packing is always difficult. Standby flight attendants are only used in emergency situations, such as keeping flights staffed with what the FAA calls “minimum crew.” In other words, there must be a certain ratio of flight attendants to passengers on board each flight, as well as enough flight attendants to operate the door exits in case of an emergency evacuation.
Reserve is a lot like being an on-call doctor—we must be ready for duty at all times. There are no late nights, absolutely no alcohol, and no going outside a manageable radius of our base (ours included three airports: John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark). We have to be packed and ready to go at a moment’s notice. This is why some flight attendants who use Laundromats are reluctant to wash their clothes. No one wants to get the dreaded call during the middle of a wash cycle! Or even worse, during a shower. (Don’t worry—we still shower. We just do it quickly.) It’s not uncommon to order a pizza and then get a call to cover a late-night trip to London and be out the door and on our way to the airport before the food even arrives. There’s no warning, no lead time, and no excuses.
Each day at a certain time, reserve flight attendants call in to see if they’ve been assigned a trip, also known as a sequence, for the following day. If we do not have a sequence on our schedule, we queue up with a number. This number is based on the hours already flown during the month. The flight attendant with the least amount of hours is assigned the lowest number and will most likely be called out to work first. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. This is where reserve gets confusing. Because the person with the lowest number may not be “legal” to work. This is why flight attendants on reserve are always on edge. A high number on the reserve list is always a relief to those looking forward to a full night of rest, but it does not mean a flight attendant can relax. Reserve is like Russian roulette. You never know who will be called out next.
What can make a flight attendant illegal to work a trip? Usually it has to do with hours, number of days on duty, and aircraft equipment. A flight attendant can remain on duty without a layover from fourteen to sixteen hours, depending on the airline and whether or not it’s a domestic or an international trip. A flight attendant needs eleven hours off between the end of one trip and the beginning of another. Reserve flight attendants get twelve hours. The minimum number of hours a flight attendant has “behind the door” at a layover hotel is eight, and the maximum number of days a flight attendant can work or remain on call is six. When flight attendants go illegal—exceed one of these numbers—a reservist is called in to cover the trip. If this happens “down line” (at an airport that does not have a flight attendant base), flights are either delayed or canceled if FAA minimum crew cannot be met.
These very same legalities affect reserve flight attendants, as they determine who will get called out to work next. Say I’m first on the reserve list and a three-day trip pops up. It departs at 8:00 a.m. Because my trip the day before landed at 10:00 p.m., I am not legal for the trip. Since I cannot sign in until 10:00 a.m., I cannot work a trip that departs before 11:00 a.m. The trip is then passed to the second flight attendant on reserve. But that person is only good for two days before entering a block of days off. The three-day trip is then assigned to the third person. Number 3 has worked more than four days in a row, so he is unable to take the trip since it would total seven days in a row of being on duty. The fourth person isn’t qualified on the aircraft equipment, so the fifth person gets the trip. But she has the same problem I have. And so on and so on and so on until the fifteenth person on the list gets woken up by crew schedule at four in the morning to work a three-day trip.
If you think that’s confusing, you can get a sense of what Georgia and I were going through, learning the ins and outs of an unusual job that practically has its own language, a language that is nearly impossible to explain to family and friends who will never understand it, regardless of how many times we try. Life sucked. And it had only just begun.
“Oh shoot!” cried Georgia when the phone rang. It was day 4 in New York and we were officially on reserve. Neither one of us moved. We just sat on our beds staring at each other all big-eyed listening to it ring.
“Pick it up!” she demanded.
I gulped. Then reluctantly I did as I was told. “Hello?”
The monotone voice on the other end said exactly what I’d been dreading all day. “Crew schedule calling for flight attendant Poole.”
The next morning I stepped out of an old white Kew Gardens minivan in front of LaGuardia Airport feeling like a million bucks. I was dressed in sensible navy heels, JCPenney stockings in the shade of “airline” and a navy pencil skirt, hemmed a perfect half inch above the knee. I’d given myself an extra hour to get ready in order to properly pin my hair back into a sophisticated French twist the way they’d shown us at the flight training academy. (Somehow I wound up with a chic side-of-the-neck bun instead.) My white button-down blouse had been starched and ironed to crisp perfection. It hid under a fitted navy blue blazer with two silver stripes around the wrist. To keep warm, I wore a long blue trench coat. And, fluttering in the chilly breeze, a red silk scarf was tied loosely around my neck. I couldn’t get over how a small piece of fabric made me feel so elegant and feminine compared to the crisscross, snap-on Nathan’s neck tie I’d worn at Sun Jet. As I waited for my driver to get my bags out of the trunk, I couldn’t help but notice that a small group of travelers waiting in line to curb-check their bags were looking at me. I don’t know what it is about a uniform, but it does make people take notice. Smiling, I waved at a toddler. My flight instructors would have been proud.
I attached my black tote to my matching rolling bag, took a deep breath and thought to myself, Show time! Two seconds later, I sailed through the automatic doors armed with a couple of pens, $20 in singles in case I needed to make change in flight, and a little black tube of M·A·C Viva Glam lipstick inside my blazer pocket. I passed through the food court, where vendors doled out powdered eggs and bricks of sausage to their first customers in line, and made my way to flight operations. I was a nervous wreck. In a little less than an hour and a half I’d be working my first of three legs today, a flight to Chicago that continued on to Dallas and then Austin. Thank God I’d been assigned the “extra position.” At least in coach I kind of knew what I was doing.
“The extra” or “the add” is just that, an extra flight attendant that has been added to the crew at the last minute. The FAA requires airlines to staff flights with one flight attendant per fifty passenger seats. This is called minimum crew. Extras are used in all kinds of situations, for example, on full flights with short flying times and long hauls offering elaborate services. Take, for instance, the New York–Chicago route. The average flying time is an hour and a half. Flying time does not include taxiing to or from the gate. There’s no way a minimum crew can serve and pick up that many drinks and meals in coach before it’s time to prepare the cabin for landing. For the Dallas–Austin route, an extra ensures that we can complete a single beverage service for 140 passengers aboard a thirty-minute flight with only fifteen minutes of flying time between takeoff and descent. And passengers wonder why flight attendants get snippy when they can’t decide what they’d like to drink!
The great thing about being an extra is you have no responsibilities on the airplane in terms of checking aircraft equipment, setting up the galley, or briefing the exit rows. Basically all you do is walk on board, oversee the boarding process, perform a safety demo and float between cabins helping whoever needs it most. Because extras hop from one flight to another and work with a new crew each leg of their trip, they rarely get caught up in crew drama. Of course, that’s also the bad thing about being an extra. You’re pretty much on your own—on and off the flight. After a flight lands, a crew will stick together and work another flight or layover for the night, never to see the extra again. It’s not uncommon for an extra to work with several different flight crews in a single day and then wind up at a hotel all alone. Many crews don’t even bother to learn the extra’s name. You’re simply referred to as “the extra,” as in, “Are you the extra?” “Where is the extra?” “Ask the extra to get some napkins from first class.”
When the extra (me) stepped aboard the airplane and counted five flight attendants sitting in first class, I thought nothing of it. I figured someone must have been “deadheading.” A deadhead is a crew member being repositioned to work another trip in a different city. Because it is a work assignment, deadheads are high on the priority list and are even paid to occupy a passenger seat throughout a flight. When I introduced myself as the extra to the crew, one of the flight attendants smirked at me.
“You’re not on this trip anymore,” he said. Before I could assure him that I was on the trip, he informed me that he’d been called out on reserve at the last minute to fill in for someone who never showed up.
Without another word, I ran back to the gate to use the computer and pull up my flight itinerary. Quickly I scanned the list of crew names and sure enough, Poole had been replaced with Edwards. Confused, I called crew tracking. When prompted, I punched in my employee number and then entered my three-letter base code. After a short beep a voice said, “Flight attendant Poole, you’ve been assigned a missed trip.”
“A missed trip? But why? I’m here. At the gate!”
“You never signed in.” My heart dropped. This was not good at all, not while I was on probation, not for my very first trip.
At my airline, a missed trip, a sick call, or even a late sign-in equates to one point on your record. Three points and you get a warning. Three warnings and company action is taken. But for me, a new hire on probation without union representation, a single point could easily get me fired, no questions asked. Horrified and embarrassed, I couldn’t imagine what I would tell my family and friends. How do you explain losing your job before it even began?
Ignoring a couple of passengers who had mistaken me for the gate agent since they were all lining up in front of the counter, I told the scheduler what had happened, how I’d gotten to the airport half an hour early just so I wouldn’t be late, and how I spent a majority of that time playing around on the computer seeing what I could pull up using as many different flight codes as I could remember from training. Well, every code, that is, except for the one to sign in, the most important one of all!
I did what any other new hire on probation who was about to lose her job would do. I begged and pleaded to be put back on the trip, apologizing profusely for screwing up, asking if there was anything I could do to make up for it until I realized I was probably only making it worse.
“I’m in big trouble, aren’t I?” I held my breath.
Eventually, the voice sighed and then said, “Sit tight. Stay at the airport in case we need you later.”
“Thank you so much! You have no idea how much I appreciate this.” Stockholm syndrome had set in. “So… am I on, like, standby duty now?”
“You’re, like, sitting at the airport in case we need you later.” Click.
Okay. That didn’t make sense. On standby duty I was officially on the clock. If I just sat around waiting, how would I get paid? I had to remind myself that that didn’t matter. Money was not important—at least not at the moment. The important thing, I told myself, was that I still had a job. At least, I was pretty sure I still had a job. I wouldn’t know for sure until later that night when I called in to see if I had an assignment for tomorrow. Curious, I typed in the flight code to bring up my record. There it was spelled out in white letters on a blue screen—MISSED TRIP. Head hung low, I walked to flight operations, and sat there for hours. All day, actually. Until finally it was so late that I figured there couldn’t be any more flights departing LaGuardia. After working up a little courage, I called crew schedule.
“Hi, this is flight attendant Poole. Can I be released?”
I could hear someone clicking away on the computer. “Released from what?”
“Oh. Umm. Nothing. Sorry,” I heard myself say as my mind screamed Hang up already! Instead I added, “Thank you,” just to be nice.
Why I wasn’t fired right then and there, I don’t know, but I thank God for it every day. Others had lost their jobs for doing less. Rumor had it that one new hire got canned for calling in sick when she actually was sick! Another had been asked to leave for wearing a non-company-issued backpack through the airport terminal. Of course, that same flight attendant had also gotten a slap on the wrist a week prior for wearing the uniform sweater around her waist, so really she should have known better. Then there was the girl who pretended to be deadheading on a flight just so she could go home. Maybe she did deserve to be let go. But did the guy who got busted for falling asleep on his jump seat on a red-eye flight deserve the same fate? Luckily for us, things would drastically change in six months’ time. I knew this because as I sat there in Ops waiting around for crew schedule to call, I saw quite a few things I could not believe, like flight attendants wearing their hair down, with buckles on their shoes, chewing gum in front of supervisors! Everything we’d been taught we couldn’t do. But until I officially joined their ranks, I’d just have to make sure I did everything else perfectly. Starting with remembering to sign in next time.
While I was not officially sitting standby, Georgia was called out to cover a trip to Kansas City. Upon discovering that the entire crew was on reserve, and from our training class, she almost had a heart attack. As soon as she hung up with the scheduler, she dialed me.
Like most new hires, Georgia wasn’t concerned about an emergency situation—we had that part down pat. What worried her the most was the service. “How are we gonna know if we’re doin’ it right?”
“You’ll be fine,” I lied. Because I was sitting in the middle of flight operations and didn’t want to alert anyone, I whispered, “Just make sure you have your flight manual out and ready to go in case you need it.”
That first week on the job, right before making the dreaded call to find out what I’d been assigned to work the following day, I’d pray for four things to not happen.
1. I did not want to work on a wide-body aircraft. The 767, DC10, A300, and MD11 were all so big and scary compared to what I had worked in the past. And the flight attendants who could hold trips on this type of equipment were even scarier. They were super senior, very cliquey, and totally set in their ways. The last thing I needed on probation was to piss off some senior mama who would write me up for not doing something a certain way.
2. I did not want to work the galley position. Why would I when all I’d done at Sun Jet was throw a couple of sodas and a bucket of ice onto a cart? At training, sure, we pretended to serve beverages to classmates on mock airplanes, but we didn’t even have real food to use! And the galleys we practiced in were not lifelike. In all our time in training, we’d discussed the different services in great detail, but we never actually set up a galley for one!
3. I did not want a trip departing out of Newark Airport. The airport was located in another state—two and half hours from my crash pad in Queens. In order to get there I’d have to walk a couple of blocks to the Long Island Railroad Station to take the train to Manhattan to catch the bus to Newark—a $30 round-trip fare, which is a lot when you can barely afford to eat. Not to mention that the four-hour travel time to and from the airport is not calculated into our twelve-hour legal rest time.
4. I did not want to work a morning sign-in. One reason I became a flight attendant was to take advantage of the flexible schedule, preferably the night flying. I just don’t do mornings well. I’d take a red-eye flight any day over a departure leaving at the crack of dawn.
Somehow all my wishes came true that week. Three trips in a row I got called out to work a narrow-body turn. I surprised myself by feeling right at home. The airplanes were all so clean and nice and the passengers always smiled and said hello, but in addition, it was work as usual—minus the delays, duct-taped armrests, and overflowing blue water leaking out of the lav, just a few of the things I’d grown accustomed to with my previous employer. The two big things that did stand out more from my old airline those first few days on the job were the quiet cockpits and all the short hemlines.
I’ll never forget sitting on the first-class galley jump seat during my first descent, my back against the cockpit wall, hearing nothing but absolute silence. It made me a little nervous. Okay, fine, really nervous! Long ago I’d learned to trust my instincts, and I just knew something had to be wrong. Why couldn’t I hear the computerized voice in the cockpit talking? Concerned, I looked at the flight attendant in charge who sat beside me, a senior gal who’d seen it all and then some based on the number of medical emergencies she’d told me she’d handled over the years. But she seemed as calm as could be, looking out the porthole window at the ground down below. Even so, I couldn’t let it go. I mean, what the heck was going on in the cockpit? Were the pilots dead? At Sun Jet we could always hear a computer voice yelling out commands from behind the locked door just before touchdown, things like, “Pull up, pull up—terrain, terrain!” After growing accustomed to that, the silence felt like a scream. If the seasoned flight attendant sitting beside me had not been there, I might have picked up the phone in a panic and broken sterile cockpit to find out. That would have had me fired for sure. Flight attendants are not allowed to contact the cockpit during sterile cockpit so that pilots can focus on what’s important—landing the plane. This was one thing I got used to pretty quickly!
As for the hemlines, this was the mid-1990s and everyone, passengers and flight attendants alike, wore skirts and dresses as short as Heather Locklear on the original Melrose Place television series. Compared to the majority of my passengers and colleagues, I looked like an Amish woman who’d gotten lost and stumbled onto an airplane. My uniform quickly began to embarrass me. It was like being a freshman nerd surrounded by cool senior cheerleaders. Forget the silver wings—gold wings at my airline are only worn by flight attendants with at least five years seniority—one glance at my dress and everyone knew I was on probation. Even frequent fliers seemed to get off on letting me know that they knew I was new. One first-class passenger decided to get up and help us in the galley as soon as he realized there were a couple of newbies working his cabin. At first we were annoyed by his know-it-all presence, but when we realized we might land with a couple of trays still out in the cabin, suddenly we were thankful for his assistance in not only collecting glassware that needed to be locked in the galley before landing, but also for helping us hand back sixteen first-class coats. In the aisle, before buckling into his seat, he took a bow. The passengers gave him a round of applause. We, the crew, slid him a bottle of wine.
The hemline had an effect on pilots, too. One look and they knew they could ask for food items they’d never in a million years get from a more seasoned flight attendant. When I told one such pilot we only had enough mixed nuts for first-class passengers, he suggested I take one or two nuts, whatever I felt comfortable with, from each passenger’s bowl. “It’ll be our little secret,” he added.
Even worse were pilots known to prey on flight attendants right out of training. Because we were young and dumb and unaware of the reputation some of these guys had, most of us found it flattering to be at the receiving end of their attention. In fact, one of my roommates, a “Cockpit Connie,” enjoyed it so much that when she finally got off probation she didn’t run straight to a tailor like the majority of us did. She left her hemline as long as possible so she could entice even more pilots into her layover hotel room late at night. On the flip side, there were the pilots who would see our long skirts and immediately go into father mode, trying to protect us from anything that could possibly go wrong in flight.
“If you have any questions, don’t be afraid to ask, and if the passengers give you a hard time, let me know and I’ll have them taken off the flight. I don’t care what the company says, I don’t put up with that kind of bull,” one told me. Those pilots were, and still are, my favorite kind, and I’d like to thank each and every one of them for giving us the support we don’t always get.
My worst flight attendant nightmare came true during my second week on the job: I got called out to work what we affectionately call the Death Cruiser 10. The DC10 was a monster of an airplane. It held more than 250 passengers and a crew of fifteen. Thirty passengers sat in first class, with fifty in business class. I’d been assigned the extra position, but things went from bad to worse real quick when I got to the airport. The flight attendant working the galley position called in sick. Because we already had an extra (me!) and it was too late to call out another reserve, scheduling told us to work it out. And so, one by one, in order of seniority, each flight attendant picked a position. Since I was the most junior flight attendant on the crew, I didn’t even have to wait until it was my turn to figure out that the lower lobe would be all mine. I offered fifty bucks I didn’t have to anyone willing to switch positions. No one took the bait. I upped it to seventy-five. They all laughed at me.
“Sweetie,” said a senior flight attendant with a beehive bun. “I haven’t worked a galley in twenty years. None of us have. You’re on your own.” Everyone nodded in agreement.
It must have been the sick look on my face that caused another flight attendant to pipe up with, “Just do the best you can. The passengers will survive.”
Actually, I wasn’t too sure about that.
Part of me wanted to throw up, but another, admittedly smaller, part of me couldn’t wait to check out the infamous lower lobe. It had a scandalous reputation, on par with Studio 54. Located underneath first and business class, it can only be reached by a one-person elevator. Completely out of sight from passengers and crew, flight attendants could do just about anything they wanted while working the galley position on DC10. Listen to music. Have a smoke. Join the mile-high club. I’d heard all kinds of crazy stories. One roommate even swore that she once opened a cart, looking for passenger leftovers to eat, and found a flight attendant fast asleep curled up inside.
The thing that freaked me out the most about the DC10 was that it only had one galley for all three cabins. On most aircraft each cabin—first class, business, and coach—has a galley. That means three flight attendants in charge of the flow of service. Now keep in mind that each cabin operates almost as if it’s its own flight in that no two cabins are ever doing the same thing at the same time. This is why the person working the DC10 lower lobe galley really has to know what he’s doing—there’s just one person in charge of setting up every single cart for all three cabins. When coach is in the middle of serving meals, business class might be starting salads as first class finishes up appetizers. A good galley is always one step ahead, preparing for the next service in each cabin.
At this particular point in my career, I had yet to work the galley on any flight, let alone three simultaneous services on one of the largest airplanes in our fleet. I hadn’t even seen how the service worked, and now I was in charge of it! Oh, I’d take working the aisle and all the accompanying drama any day over getting stuck in the galley with no idea of what’s going on. But, like Georgia working with an all-new crew, I didn’t have a choice. So I opened my flight manual to the page with all the diagrams showing how to set up different carts, and armed with a pair of company-issued galley gloves that were so long and silver they looked like they might belong on a space shuttle, I waved buh-bye to my crew and took the elevator down.
When the elevator reached the bottom, I turned the handle and opened the door slowly. Oh. My. God. I just stood there in the windowless room with my mouth wide open. I was surrounded by carts and compartments—bazillions of them, filled top to bottom with silverware and linens, condiments and food, so much food—and even more glassware. And the ice, there must have been fifty bags I’d have to break up before the flight even took off! I had no idea where to start or what to do first—figure out how to organize the beverage carts or count the meals. Suddenly I began to feel claustrophobic. I needed to get out of there and quick. What if a fire broke out and I got trapped down here? Would anyone come and save me? When I spotted what looked like a fire escape hatch on the ceiling, I wondered which cabin I would pop up into. And how would I know when to go up and strap into the jump seat for takeoff? Would I be able to hear the captain’s PA? I tried not to hyperventilate as I began opening each and every single cart and compartment door. They were far from empty. This was bad, very bad. On the verge of tears, I felt sorry for the passengers who actually spent good money for the service we were about to provide.
There are two types of flight attendants, those who work the aisle and those who prefer to never set foot out of the galley. In the galley you get burned, break fingernails, and snag your hose, but many flight attendants prefer this to getting poked, prodded, pulled, and grabbed in the aisle. Trust me—there are quite a few touchy-feely passengers who will probably live a whole lot longer if certain flight attendants stay in the galley. Some of these same flight attendants have become so antisocial and set in their ways after years of working the same position, they won’t even allow coworkers into the galley without their permission. A few are notorious for locking it off long before landing, as if they own it. Doesn’t matter if 10B wants a Pepsi and there’s still thirty minutes left in flight. The galley is closed! End of discussion. Galley rules.
Those who prefer the galley over the aisle aren’t all bad. Most are organized, handy, and familiar with the tricks of the trade. They can cut through the paper surrounding a bottle of wine using a pair of salad tongs. They’ll keep coffee warm by placing cookie plates over aluminum pots. Champagne corks unwilling to budge are placed upside down in a cup of hot water for just a few seconds and then—pop!—mimosas for first class. (The airline does not condone this as someone is bound to get shot in the eye with a flying cork if it’s not done correctly.) If the balsamic salad dressing is a popular choice in business, a good galley will mix in a little orange juice to stretch it out for a few more rows, thwarting potential passenger meltdowns. Because there are only a few ovens that keep everything warm, we can’t cook meals to order, so when a premium-class passenger requests the steak well done, the galley will either deny the request or dunk the piece of meat into a cup of hot water until it’s the proper shade of brown and once again, possible passenger trouble avoided. Lumpy hot fudge becomes smooth once again with just a drop of hot coffee. These are the kinds of things a good galley employee knows, which is exactly why I had no business working the lower lobe—or any galley, for that matter.
That’s when I heard it. It could have been God. I’m not joking. Or maybe it was the lead flight attendant, or purser, having a manly moment. Either way, a deep voice from above said, “The most important thing you can do, Heather, is familiarize yourself with the galley.” So that’s what I did. And I don’t think it was the worst flight in the world, although, by the number of carts that were immediately returned with curt instructions as to how to make them right, I’m guessing it came pretty close. Oh well, everyone has to learn somehow.
While I was stressing out over the DC10 service, Georgia was dealing with something almost worse. She’d been called to cover a flight to Los Angeles working in first class as the purser. That meant she was in charge of the entire airplane. If something went wrong, Georgia would be the one to handle it. Pursers are only staffed on long-haul or overseas flights. She’d been assigned the position on reserve, a position crew schedule only gave to regular flight attendants when there weren’t any qualified pursers available. To even be considered for the training class, they go through an extensive interview process. Once accepted, the two-week course is intense and not everyone makes it through.
Honestly, if it had been me, I might have called in sick. Avoiding all that responsibility during my second week of flying would have been more than worth a point on my record. But ignorance is bliss, and Georgia had never flown with a senior crew on a wide-body before, so she had no idea what she was up against.
When I pointed this out, she just laughed. “Come on, what are the odds something will go wrong?”
Georgia, I’d begun to notice, had become overly confident after working that trip with an entire crew of first-time flight attendants.
Sure enough, thirty minutes after takeoff, one of the senior flight attendants from the back called Georgia in first class to inform her that two passengers in coach were fighting over an armrest. “You need to come back here and deal with this!”
“Are you serious?” Georgia giggled.
“Hey, last I checked, you’re the one who gets paid the big bucks!” And it was true—rookie Georgia was getting two extra dollars an hour for the reserve assignment she’d drawn. But I know for a fact she would have preferred her regular salary to purser pay and all that went along with it.
Never one to cower under pressure, Georgia fluffed her hair, straightened her navy blue vest, and walked down the aisle to the back of the aircraft as if it were a pageant stage. She got down on one knee in the aisle like we’d been instructed to do in training. Getting down to the passenger’s level makes flight attendants less threatening and puts passengers at ease. Generally speaking, regardless of whether or not we can solve a problem, the majority of passengers just want to be heard. So Georgia smiled a beauty queen smile, introduced herself, and then patiently listened to each passenger’s side of the story.
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, eyeing first one passenger and then the other. “How ’bout you use the armrest the first three hours in flight and then you can use it the last three hours. I’ll come back from time to time to check on y’all.”
“Okay,” they said in unison. Problem solved.
As soon as Georgia got back to the first-class galley the phone rang again. This time it had to do with a reclined seat back. And it didn’t stop ringing for the rest of the flight, but Georgia made it through. I wasn’t sure she was going to make it through the next challenge though: the holidays were right around the corner.