Cruising Attitude

by Heather Poole

  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 eac
h 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.

  Chapter 6

  Unhappy Holidays

  CHRISTMAS MEANT EVERYTHING to Georgia, and it killed her that she wouldn’t be able to spend it with the one she loved. It was bad enough she was already homesick and had approximately 184.2 days until her travel benefits kicked in, but she’d been assigned an undesirable schedule of days off that had her on call Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day! The two of us were completely broke, living with a bunch of freaks in what could only be described as a flophouse, freezing our butts off far, far, away from home, and we were new hires on probation, and on reserve during what should have been the most joyous time of the year. We had been in New York for only fourteen days and life couldn’t get much worse.

  But then something miraculous happened. The crew-scheduling gods must have been smiling down on us. Not only did Georgia get assigned an easy, quick trip to Albany, but she also got assigned to work the trip with me! How lucky were we to get to work a two-day trip together over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? If we couldn’t spend it with our families, at least we got to spend it with each other. And we qualified for holiday pay—time and a half! (This disappeared after 9/11.) We couldn’t wait. Well, really, I couldn’t wait. Georgia just wanted to go home. While I practiced my PAs out loud on the bed, Georgia curled up under the covers with the phone. She wanted to see how much a ticket to North Carolina would cost so she could make a surprise visit to see her boyfriend—John, Jack, Jake, whatever his name was—on her days off as soon as we got back. My guy, on the other hand, was way too understanding about my absence, even though I kept hinting around that he’d probably be better off without me. Anyone else would have found that sweet. Me, I was starting to get annoyed. The time had come to move on.

  If it hadn’t been Christmas Eve, our flight would have been perfect. Our load was light, the passengers were all very nice, the service went smoothly, and best of all, there were tons of first-class leftovers to eat, so I took it upon myself to set up the dessert cart like a buffet line. Merry Christmas to us! Georgia and I were hanging out in the galley talking about who knows what when the senior flight attendant, who had chosen to work in order to avoid his in-laws, exclaimed, “Oh my God, we’re landing!”

  Usually when a flight attendant says “we’re landing” it’s a good thing. It means the flight is almost over, and we’ll soon be on the ground relaxing by a pool at a layover hotel somewhere. But add the words “Oh my God” to the beginning of that phrase, and a good thing instantly becomes bad, very bad, as in “you don’t want to know” bad, as in “FAA personal fine” bad, as in “Linda, my roommate from training’s makeup” bad! It was that bad. Quickly the three of us began cramming food, dishes, glassware, half-full bottles of wine, anything we could get our hands on into inserts that were already full. I glanced out the window and saw rooftops and streetlights.

  Folding the dessert cart and shoving it inside its compartment, I asked in a panic, “Did either one of you hear the captain make the prepare-for-landing announcement?” Because I didn’t want to have to take the blame for this!

  “He never made it. Just leave the racks inside of the oven!” ordered the senior flight attendant. “Lock the carts and take your seat ASAP. I’ll grab whatever’s left out in first class and then stow it behind the last row.” He pointed at Georgia who stood frozen with eyes open wide, “You pick up trash on your way back to your jump seat—now, go go go! We’re going to be on the ground in a few seconds.”

  I didn’t even have time to buckle my seat belt when I felt the wheels grind against the runway. As we rolled down the tarmac, I could see Georgia and her partner in crime still standing in the aisle. Sweating, I made the PA welcoming everyone to Buffalo.

  “Albany!” a few passengers yell out. “We’re in Albany!”

  “I mean Albany,” I corrected over the PA.

  Our layover hotel was a motel, only worse. The rooms smelled musty, the television didn’t come with a remote, and the bed was covered with something someone’s grandmother crocheted twenty years ago. I bravely walked barefoot across the shag carpet, closed the floral curtains, and sneezed. I was just about to call Georgia to see if she wanted to come over and order room service, but I couldn’t find the menu. That’s because there was no menu. The hotel didn’t offer room service. And the restaurant was closed.

  “If you’re hungry there’s a vending machine down the hall,” the hotel concierge told me over the phone.

  I knew that eating peanut-butter crackers and Cheetos in a musty motel on Christmas Eve would definitely send Georgia over the edge and down the road to quitsville. I had to think of something quick, an alternative plan to take her mind off the situation. Before I could come up with anything, I heard a tap on my window. My heart lurched. There it was again! Tap-tap-tap—so subtle and soft and—whomp! I fell to the floor, crawled to the rotary phone, and dialed 0.

  “Send security to my room right away!”

  Airline crews take hotel security very seriously. We don’t tell passengers where we’re laying over. When we get to the hotel, we never say our room numbers out loud. We either jot them down on one another’s room key covers or quickly flash the key card. We never know who’s listening. Because hotels are known to issue the same rooms to crew members day after day, month after month, and year after year, hotel personnel are quite familiar with which rooms are ours. Chances are the occupant of one of these rooms, which is always located near an elevator and an ice machine, or at the end of a long hall, is going to be an attractive female. Who better to cut up with a hatchet than a flight attendant?

  Think I’m joking? There’s a layover hotel in Los Angeles where a flight attendant was found naked and hanging in her closet. This is why we use our luggage to prop the door to our room open before retiring for the night. While one coworker checks under the bed, inside the closet, and behind the shower curtain another coworker waits outside in the hallway. Then we switch. I heard of a flight attendant who got down on hands and knees, lifted the bed skirt, and spotted a head staring back at her. She ran out of the room screaming bloody murder later to find out it was her own mirrored reflection that scared her so.

  Not all flight attendants are quite so lucky. A handful became the victims of the guy who wore a white jogging suit and carried a plastic cup while riding the elevators up and down early in the mornings looking for flight attendants on their way to the crew van for pickup. Once he found his prey, he’d toss a “sticky white substance” on their uniform and then run away. This went on for months.

  Fifteen minutes after I called the hotel desk/operator/security guy, I finally heard a knock on my door. Chain still on, I cracked the door open and told him what happened. He promised to go outside and do a walk around the property.

  Georgia came to my door about two seconds later, all bundled up with rosy cheeks. “You’ve got to come outside. The snow is absolutely gorgeous!”

  I gulped. I didn’t dare tell her about the madman running around outside, knowing how close she’d just come to death.

  She tossed my sneakers at me. “I made a snowman. Come see! Hey, didn’t you hear me throwing snowballs at your window?”

  Snowballs, killers, whatever, sometimes things aren’t always as they seem.

  When Georgia called Jake, Jeff, Jack, whatever his name was, to wish him a Mer
ry Christmas, he thanked her and then asked if he could call her right back, hanging up the phone before she could say good-bye. Half an hour later she called him back, but he didn’t answer. While she waited for him to return her call, we ate dinner out of a vending machine located on the second floor of our three-star motel. Although we would have been much happier with turkey and dressing at home with our family and friends, we made the best of it with a couple packets of peanut-butter crackers and Diet Coke. It wasn’t how I’d ever expected to spend Christmas, but hey—we had wished for a job with a flexible lifestyle, hadn’t we? It was just that in my dreams I saw myself in Zurich, not Buffalo—I mean Albany!

  After we returned from our Christmas trip, I decided I wanted to go home, too, and nothing would stop me. Like Georgia, I had a credit card and I was determined to use it. But instead of relaying my credit card numbers to the airline representative over the phone, I hung up.

  “Eight hundred dollars! That’s how much it costs for a one-way ticket from New York to Dallas! I can’t believe it!” Actually I could believe it. I just didn’t want to believe it. But free travel was one of the main reasons I’d decided to become a flight attendant in the first place. Lord knows I couldn’t afford to do so otherwise.

  “Don’t worry! Your travel benefits will kick in in about . . . oh, six months!” Mimi, one of the many flight attendants in our house, sat on a twin bed on the far side of the room, intently studying a copy of Glamour magazine that she’d found on her last flight to Los Angeles. Although she’d been in New York only three weeks longer than the rest of us, she seemed so much wiser. None of us wanted to admit it, especially Georgia, but we looked up to the girl with the chic blond bob who had worked a 767 in business class her very first day on the job and lived to tell about it! Oh, how I dreaded getting called out to work a 767 for the first time. My disastrous DC10 flight had scarred me for life. I didn’t want anything to do with another wide-body again.