Galley Gossip: Just a few things a flight attendant doesn’t want to hear

1. BRACE! – I’ll bet you there wasn’t a flight attendant in the world who did not open their flight manual and review the ditching procedures right after seeing what an amazing job the US Airways crew did evacuating a flight after landing in the Hudson River. On my last flight from New York to Chicago, out of La Guardia, you better believe I felt for my life vest under my jumpseat and did a quick 30 second review of our emergency evacuation procedures before take-off. While I know what I have to do, do you know you should do when the flight crew yells BRACE!

2. QUICK, I NEED A BARF BAG! – The last time I heard these dreaded words I happened to be standing in the first class galley. A passenger from coach came running all the way up the aisle and proceeded to throw up all over the lead flight attendant who was holding an open plastic bag, two commuting flight attendants sitting on the jumpseat, the cockpit door, the first class galley counter, and all over the linoleum floor. The sick woman pretty much made a semi-circle from the entry door to the coffee pots, hitting everything in sight – except for me, thank God. I felt really bad for her. I felt even worse for the other flight attendants. But it was Chris, a fellow coworker, who got the worst of it. When he bent over to clean up the vomit with a little shovel and crystals that turn barf into a foamy gel, his cell phone fell out of his starched shirt pocket and smack dab into the mess.

3. I PROBABLY FLY MORE THAN YOU DO – That’s the phrase that bothers my friend Anthony, a flight attendant for a foreign carrier, the most. It’s what usually follows next that bothers me – I’M A (insert frequent flier status here)! Even so, that doesn’t give you the right to do whatever it was you were doing that you were asked to stop doing, something you already know you shouldn’t be doing, given the miles you’ve flown. Now turn it off and put it away.

4. CAN I HAVE A GLASS OF WATER – SO I CAN TAKE A PILL Passengers don’t realize how quickly airplanes are turned around. Before I even have a chance to stow my crew bags and check the emergency equipment to make sure that it’s there and working, passengers are already making their way down the aisle to their seats. Boarding is by far the busiest time for a flight attendant. Half the time we haven’t even had a chance to set up the galley when passengers, five seconds after walking aboard the airplane, come running to the back of the aircraft to ask for “pill water.” Which is why we sometimes look a little flustered by the request.

5. SO DOES THAT MEAN THE ALCOHOL IS FREE? Whenever an announcement is made that there’s going to be a delay, nine times out of ten a passenger (or four) will ask if the alcohol is free, and freak out when it’s not free, because when it rains or snows or the airplane has a mechanical, free alcohol is always the solution. I mean who doesn’t want to get trapped in a flying tube for hours on end with a bunch of drunk passengers?

6. YOU’RE HOLDING US HOSTAGE! Luckily the only passenger I’ve ever heard use this phrase was celebrity passenger who is known for her magazine and television show. She made this announcement years ago in the first class galley after sitting on the tarmac in New York for over an hour due to icy weather conditions at the airport. We were flying to Bermuda. After the crew explained that we could not go back to the gate and lose our spot for take-off just for her she eventually sat back down and surprisingly did not say another word. My coworker Florence, who found herself with a three hour air traffic control hold in Chicago on a full Super80 flight with hysterical passengers – two who were claustrophobic and one who kept threatening to sue because the airline was holding him hostage, announced, ‘And how do you think I feel?” My sentiments exactly. No one likes a delay, including flight attendants.

7. ARE THERE ANY FIRST CLASS SEATS AVAILABLE? Recently a woman asked me this question on a flight from New York to San Francisco because her headsets didn’t work at her seat and she refused to move to another aisle seat in coach unless her husband could sit right beside her. The flight was full. Trust me when I tell you that if you feel the need to ask this question, the answer is no. Flight attendants do not upgrade passengers. Gate agents are the only ones with upgrading power, so those are the people you need to schmooze. But keep in mind that not only is there a standby list for those oh-so-precious premium seats, and each and every passenger on that list knows exactly where their name is on the list, there are very strict rules about moving passengers from coach to first class when there are seats available.

8. CAN YOU HELP ME GET MY BAG IN THE OVERHEAD BIN? For those of you who follow my blog, this question was addressed in my post, flight attendant pet peeve #3: you want me to do what? Simply put, unless you are an unaccompanied minor, elderly or handicapped and your bag is not too heavy, I will not put the bag in the bin. What I will do is help you find a place for the bag. I may assist you in getting the bag inside the bin, but the key word here is assist, people, as in team effort, because I will not do it for you.

9. WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO FOOD / WE HAVE TO PAY FOR FOOD / YOU RAN OUT OF MY PREFERRED FOOD CHOICE? Exactly that – there’s no food, you have to pay for food, or we ran out of your preferred food choice – nothing more. It’s not personal. It’s business. So whatever you do, please don’t get mad at me, I’m just the messenger. Trust me when I tell you that flight attendants dread passing this message along to you. We already know how you’re going to respond. So just where did the service go? Unfortunately it disappeared along with those high ticket prices, which is why we’re now all stuck inside the flying metal tube together. Can’t we all just get along, regardless of the food situation?

10. ON MY LAST FLIGHT… These four little words are just the beginning of what I like to call “the bad response,” which is the response I often get whenever I tell someone what I do for a living. Ya see these four oh-so-innocent words will now be followed by a pause, which will then be accompanied by a weird look, which of course leads to a very bad story about their last flight. Needless to say, the conversation usually doesn’t go so well after this. How can it? I’ve now been linked to the worst flight this person has ever had.

11. (From creepy pilot) ANYONE WANT A BACK RUB? Uh – no! I don’t think so. Now here’s your coffee. Get back in the cockpit and stay there! This question came from my favorite pilot, Bob, the singing pilot, who is so not creepy at all, even though he did write a song about me – Lay across your jump seat, Heather.

12. HERE, TAKE THIS DIAPER? I’ll take the diaper, but only if you’ll work the beverage cart. Seriously, the last thing I want to touch is a dirty diaper (or crumpled snot rag) when I serve people food and drinks for a living. It’s just not sanitary to do such a thing. Look, I have a two year-old who travels often, so I know how it is, I know it’s not easy, but you’re going to have to keep the diaper at your seat until the aisle is clear and you can dispose of it properly in the lavatory trash receptacle.

13. WHEN DO WE GET THERE (During boarding) As I stand in the aisle and stare blankly at my watch, I’m trying to remember where we are right now, because I’ve been to several cities already, and where are we going again? Oh yeah, now I’ll just add the flying time, subtract the time change, and while I’m doing this passengers are flagging me down for “pill water” and asking me to help stow their bags. “Don’t they know what time they land when they buy their ticket?” asked Lynne, a fellow coworker. “Honestly, flight attendants only know what time they have to report to the airplane.” Sad, but true.

14. CAN YOU BREAK A $100? Uh-no! Which is exactly why you’re asking. Whenever somebody asks me to break a large bill, I make it a point to find the change, even if I have to go through the cabin begging each and every passenger to help me out. Usually passengers who carry big bills are trying to score a free headset, drink, or snack. Oh I know exactly what they’re doing. And don’t ask me for change every five seconds in flight, either. I don’t have it. I’ll get it to you as soon as possible. I’m not going anywhere. I promise!

15. WHERE ARE WE? On the airplane. Honestly, I don’t know where we are when I’m working a flight. I don’t have a chance to sit and stare out the window. What I do know is that we’re not there yet and the man in 24B would like a diet coke and his wife would like a glass of water – no ice, and that there are at least 50 more passengers behind you left to serve, before we pull the cart back up to the front of the aircraft and throw it all away. Please don’t make me walk all the way to the back of the aircraft, not when I’m in the middle of the service, just to call the cockpit and find out where we are – approximately, because we won’t be there for long and you know you’re going to ask me again, because we’re still not there yet.

Other tales from the skies
Amazing and insane stories from a real-life flight attendant and co-pilot

Personal jouney: Growing up in 2 countries, 7 states

For the first six years of my life, I was a rather normal kid, aside from the fact I still slept with my mom (back then, the Chinese frowned upon niceties like extra beds), and before every hot meal, I fetched from downstairs the bricks of coal needed to heat the stove. Then, on my sixth birthday, mom said the Americans would finally let us come live with dad, who was studying at Texas Tech in Lubbock. Our nosy neighbors were ecstatic. “You make sure to meet a cute blonde girl,” the elderly woman next door said as she wobbled away in her bound feet. “And don’t move back here.”

I didn’t quite understand the buzz of excitement. I already had my little kingdom all figured out, and in it, I was emperor. The Mattel cars, model locomotive, and collection of weirdly shaped rocks answered to no one but me. Yet there was one thing I did understand, and that was these toys weren’t going to make it across the ocean with me.
Not until the first night after landing in Lubbock did I start to develop my fetish. You see, that was the very first night I slept in my very own bed, with my own covers and pillow. To most kids, having their own bed would have been the most thrilling part of the deal. But it was love at first sight between the pillow and me. It was so stuffed with down feathers I was afraid to put the full weight of my head on it in fear the seams would burst.

Though once I plopped my head down, with a muffled thud, I felt like I was sleeping on puff of cloud. The feathers were so soft they surely must have been plucked from hatchlings. But I also loved the pillow for what it was not: sand-filled and thin enough that I needed three to make a decent-sized headrest. For the first six years of my life, that was all I ever knew in a pillow.

My dad had sorely underestimated my attachment to the pillow. It didn’t help that he bought a Tweety Bird pillowcase to put over it, which made it one giant, extremely huggable, stuffed animal. Needless to say, I took it everywhere. Looking back, I’m not sure if the ladies at the grocery store were staring at me because of my sailor shirt and short shorts (“trust me, all the boys here wear them,” my mom had said) or the giant pillow I was clutching.

Suddenly thrown into a world where people talked in gibberish and my closest relatives lived in Baltimore, which sounded as far away as Beijing, my pillow was someone I could count on to be there for me. I even named it Tom, a bit of irony considering I picked out the name Jerry, after his clever nemesis, for myself a short time later when first grade began. Of course I couldn’t let the pillow be the dashing one in the relationship.

During the month in Lubbock, I had no toys since we were about to move again and my parents had to pay off dad’s tuition. That was fine with me, because I was too busy rolling around in the grass outside, with Tom usually propped up against a streetlamp pole (his posture is just awful). In China, you would have never been allowed to sit, walk across, or in any way come close to a patch of the rare green stuff. So when no one was looking, I even let Tom roll around on it for a bit – of course, usually with my head on top of him.

For the thousand-mile trip between Lubbock, Texas and Ames, Iowa, our next home, we didn’t have the money to fly, nor did we have a car to drive. So we took Greyhound. I was the only kid on the bus, if you didn’t count the single mother with the crying baby in the back. I guess you could’ve counted me as baby #2 for clutching Tom the whole eighteen hours.

My time in Ames was that of a typical boy. I soon learned English and the rules of the playground, the first being that a pillow wasn’t going to make me any new friends. So Tom, like sharing a bed with my mom or having to get coal for the stove, became something I kept to myself, because, well, you just can’t expect another 10-year-old to understand that.

In fifth grade, we moved again, this time to Omaha, Nebraska, which was only two hundred miles west, and easily covered in our 1984 Mazda 626. Back then, I could still lay stretched out in the backseat, though starting the year before, I had to slightly bend my knees. My head would also hit the door handle whenever we went over a bump, but for the most part, Tom kept me pretty cushioned.

By now, he had lost the Tweety Bird outfit, replaced by a more sensible, Robin egg blue pillowcase. The tag with the washing instructions had been worn away to a blur, with only recognizable words: “100% cotton.” Apparently Tom wasn’t a feathery Tweety Bird after all. And everywhere he went, he left behind fuzzy pieces of lint here and tiny snippets of string there, much like a tomcat I suppose.

Tom was still clinging on to life when we moved again a year later. This time, we had accumulated too much stuff to jam into the Mazda – and plus, we could afford an U-haul truck now. As we were hurtling through the ominous hills of Appalachia, on our way to Wilkesboro, North Carolina, I woke up from my nap in the backseat, and happened to notice Tom’s scent. Despite the countless wash cycles that my mom forced on Tom (“It’ll kill him,” I had pleaded once), he smelled of home. Not any particular place mind you, but the smell of a home’s security and refuge, not unlike what my grandmother’s lavender scent would invoke in me.

After middle school ended, we moved to Ohio and this time, we could fly. Tom was no longer himself, having lost much weight from a thousand nights supporting my head. That meant he was compact enough for me to bring on the plane (as a headrest of course). That was the last time he was seen in public. A year later, we moved to South Carolina, and a week after that, I came home to find another pillow on the bed.

“This one’s actually made from goose feathers,” my mom said. “I threw that ratty old one out. You needed something new.”

FlightsFromHell.com: Wallow in the misery of others

I’ll be honest: I’m a little surprised we haven’t covered this here on Gadling, but I’ve searched the archives to no avail. (Please, dear readers, correct me if I’m wrong!)

FlightsFromHell.com is just like the URL sounds: a depository of unsavory airborne experiences shared by people like us. It’s simple. You, as a reader, can peruse the collection of unfortunate stories, conveniently pigeonholed into categories like Reclining Seats, Luggage and Delays, and Weird People. Let’s jump into that last category and see what we can find! (If you’re eating, stop reading.)

“Then – a man, about late 60’s/early 70’s, sits in the seat one row in front and across the aisle from me. He situates himself, waits until we take off, and proceeds to take off his shoes….first the right, then the left….followed by, of course, his socks – first the right then the left…..he then begins to PICK at the dead, scaly skin on his feet. I’m not kidding – he used his finger nails to scrape, scrape and pull the dead skin from his heels, his toes, the arch of his foot.”

As a writer, and experiencer of horrible things on planes, you can submit your own stories. Do you have any bad experiences worth sharing? Give us the100-word version here, in the comments, and save the novel for FlightsFromHell.com.

[Via Grow-a-Brain]

Talking Travel with Chuck Thompson

Aaron recently introduced Chuck Thompson’s new book, Smile While You’re Lying, and today Gadling got the opportunity to have a chat with him. The interview talks about savage travel stories, “Journalistic Tiramisu,” travel-blogging, the authors complaints on the road, and the future of the travel-industry. Enjoy!

We also have 5 copies of the book to giveaway, so stick around after the interview to find out how you can score one for free!

Thank you for talking to us here at Gadling! The content of your book elaborates on savage travel truths that are usually off-limits for general travel-press, what motivated you to make this book happen? What were the challenges you faced in getting this book published?

I got fed up with coming back from intense experiences on the road – and I mean ??intense?? in both good and bad ways – and being muzzled by editors who demanded copy that sacrificed intelligence and storytelling for the sake of advertiser-friendly pap. Not just in travel, but a lot of magazine writing these days is basically glorified PR copy. The stories I told my friends over beers or wrote about in emails never seemed to make it into my bylined pieces. I’d have a story published somewhere and weeks later a friend would call and say, ??Hey, I saw your article on Panama in such-and-such magazine.?? And I’d sort of cringe and say, ??Oh, man, let me tell you what really happened in Panama.??
The challenges were pretty much the challenges faced by any unknown writer with a book proposal-it’s matter of finding the right agent and editor who really “get” your idea in the same way you do. The first agent I sent my proposal to sent back a nasty note telling me how appalled she was by the pitch and my Thailand chapter and how I’d better rethink what I was doing. She actually sent me some photocopied pages from a book on how to be a successful writer. But I remained pretty confident about finding the right people to get behind this. From the time I sent the first proposal out to the book actually getting published took about three and a half years.

What inspired the title of the book and its visual?

The title alludes to the small fibs that travel writers such as myself have to go along with in order to preserve their jobs as travel writers, the larger ones told everyday by the travel industry that perpetuate the accepted myths of the industry, and also the broader triumph of public relations that’s made our mainstream media supplicant to corporate and government spin. As for the cover, it’s meant to express what the book aims to be-fun and entertaining, but also something that shines a subversive light upon travel icons. A lot of people don’t catch it, but if you look at the cover closely, you’ll find a little subversive visual joke hidden in there.

I had to laugh as you tagged travel stories in glossy commercial magazines as “Journalistic Tiramisu,” could you explain this term?

Just the sort of lightweight, drooling, praise-heavy hack copy routinely applied to make mundane places and trips sound “magical” and “resplendent.” Travel writers can’t just walk, they have to “amble” or “meander.” They don’t simply eat, they “dine.” Any store opened within the last two years is “hip,” “hot,” or “happening.” All seas sparkle, all views are breathtaking. My favorite descriptions of this sort of travel reporting are “witless puffery” and “sun-dappled barf,” both of which I heard from other travel writers. (So please don’t present them as mine, even though I wish they were.)

You talk about the travel industry being in a state of dramatic flux and that the “golden age” of international tourism may be drawing to a close; what then, in your opinion, is the future of the travel industry?

There seem to be two divergent opinions on the matter. Boeing and Airbus and other travel and transportation companies-many based in China and around Asia-currently forecast a five-percent annual increase in air travel over the next two decades. This will cause world air traffic to triple by 2030. Imagine three times more babies and three times as many wankers in the middle seat battling you for armrest hegemony on your flight from New York to L.A.

There is a mitigating factor and that is oil. Can we get a stable supply of it out of the Middle East for the next twenty years? Even if we can, is Peak Oil for real and, if it is (which I happen to believe), how soon will it begin causing major problems with mass transportation? Look, you can build all the battery-powered cars you want and probably make ’em work, but getting a fully-loaded 757 off the ground or turning diesel-powered props of a cruise or cargo ship is quite another story. At the moment, there’s nothing even close to alternative fuel for those monsters. Those things aren’t little, plastic four-seaters that need to range 150 miles at a time. They require real power.

The “savage” type of content in your book is often found on travel blogs. How do you think the blogging industry — that warrants personal, raw and original content — will affect the travel publishing industry?

I love blogs. I like contributing to them, reading them, and being a part of them. It’s the best place right now to find authentic travel writing, even if it’s sometimes rough. I wish I had more time to spend reading them. However, I firmly believe the demise of print media has been greatly exaggerated. I don’t expect print to go away in my lifetime, I don’t expect books or magazines to lose their appeal, especially not as long as we continue to condition our kids to read on paper. You know what’s happening with the children’s book market in this country? It’s a gold rush, a boom economy. When I walk into a bookstore and see rows and rows of featured children’s books, I think, “Good for all of us in the print biz.” And just for portability and tactile pleasure and saving my eyeballs, I do prefer books, magazines, and other hard copy to reading on a monitor. I think blogs already are and will become an even larger part of the legit media mix. This is great. But they aren’t going to replace mainstream media anytime soon.

You say in your intro that one of the best things of being a traveler is complaining about the parts you don’t like, I couldn’t agree more! Care to share some of your biggest complaints on the road with Gadling readers?

I know it comes with the territory and I’m generally good-natured and smiley about it, but I absolutely hate being the zoo-animal white guy celebrity in rural Asian and African villages. There’s a smile-when-you’re-lying moment for you-me surrounded by thirty kids yanking at my arm hair with a big idiot grin of affability on my face. I’ve got a bunch of those photos and in every one I was hating life when it was taken.

Another complaint I have is with uppity “travelers” who complain about all the damn “tourists.” We’re all tourists, to a degree, none really any better than the next. If someone wants to spend his travel dollars squatting for two weeks in a bamboo hut in Cambodia, cool. If someone else wants to take her three kids to Walt Disney World in Orlando and stuf
f them with fried dough and Mega-bucket Dr. Peppers, as far as I’m concerned, that’s just as authentic an experience, whether they enjoyed it ironically or not.

What is the worst thing that has happened to you on the road?

I guess having all my money-$1,200-stolen in Thailand. I attempted to turn this into a humorous story in Smile When You’re Lying, but it was absolutely horrible when it happened and I was not thinking at the time how enriching an experience it was. In fact, I was sort of panicked. I was on an island and couldn’t even get off to make a phone call for help for lack of ferry fare. Wandering around that island starving and begging for help was lonely and miserable and embarrassing.

The biggest travel myth in your opinion?

That places are dangerous and people are scary and out to get you. I’ve been to a lot of cities and countries I was repeatedly warned not to go because it was so dangerous. Muslim-rebel territory in Mindanao in the Philippines. The Congolese jungle. Caracas. Wherever there are people, there’s normalcy. People go to work and school, they buy food at the market, they make dinner, they love their families, they’re generally kind or at least civil with strangers. I’m not talking about legitimate war zones, which are different, but for the most part, the paranoia of many people about international travel is grossly unjustified. People who don’t travel to these places think that those of us who do are adventurous and brave. But you go to these places and you see what a lie that is. And you come home and smile about it. What the hell, let ’em think you’re brave. Maybe they’ll buy one of your books.

Thanks, Chuck!

More information can be found at www.chuckthompsonbooks.com

Want to win a copy of the book? It’s easy. Here’s how:

  • To enter, simply leave a comment below telling us about the worst thing that’s happened to you while traveling. Make sure to use a valid e-mail address, or else we’ll have no way to contact you if you win!
  • The comment must be left before Friday, January 4, 2008 at 8:00 PM Eastern Time.
  • You may enter once.
  • 5 winners will be selected in a random drawing.
  • 5 winners will receive Smile When You’re Lying (valued at $15.00).
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