Authors: Heather Poole
In the travel section of Barnes & Noble, I once met a guy named Bob. I didn’t believe him when he told me he was a pilot. He looked too good to be a pilot! Not that Bob is conventionally handsome. He’s kind of nerdy. But he knows how to rock the dark denim without the pilot’s trademark running sneakers. When I asked Bob why so many pilots dressed terribly, he said it’s because his coworkers spend too much time looking for tools in the Sears catalog and then accidentally stumble into its clothing section. “It’s not so much that being a pilot causes one to be fashion-challenged, it’s just that we tend to be better at things like engineering, checking the car’s oil, fixing things around the house, and not asking for driving directions. This opposed to fashion design,” he explained.
Too bad Bob wasn’t around to help my roommate Jane’s date, a 767 first officer, pick out something to wear on their first date. Hot Shot showed up dressed to impress wearing golf shoes, skin-tight acid-washed jeans, and a turquoise jacket.
“He looked like such a nerd,” Jane cringed after the date. “I don’t think I would have agreed to go out with him if he’d looked like that when he asked me out.”
Thank God for first impressions. And uniforms.
They spent three weeks getting to know each other over the phone before their first date. They weren’t intentionally taking it slow, but that’s how long it took before they were finally able to coordinate their schedules. In the long run, this was a good thing since it helped that Jane was practically head over heels for the guy by the time they finally went out. Otherwise she might not have been able to overlook the off-duty fashion disaster, and he would have never made it to second base. Two months into the relationship Jane talked her man into donating the shoes and the jeans, along with a dozen or so obnoxious Christmas ties and half a closet full of college clothes, to Goodwill. Then she borrowed his credit card and went shopping. She may have purchased a few things for him, too, because after they broke up two years later Hot Shot was considered one of the best-dressed pilots in the system. Much to her dismay he had no problem scoring another flight attendant who got to enjoy the fruits of Jane’s labor. But don’t feel badly for Jane. She upgraded to an airbus captain.
Gary and I didn’t date for long. In fact we didn’t really “date.” We went out a few times over the course of five months or so. But Gary turned into the better-looking but terribly dressed version of my mother when he began spending a lot of time talking to me about his job and why I should be doing it—or one somewhat similar to it. I never told him I’d interviewed with an airline before. Perhaps I wanted to block it from my mind. Instead I kept explaining to him that I wanted to do something more with my life than serve drinks and pick up trash. Every time I told him this I sounded snottier and more full of myself until I began to make my own self sick. I don’t know why Gary put up with me. But he did, and that’s when I started inventing reasons not to go out with him. When he didn’t take the hint, I stopped calling him back.
A year after he disappeared from my life, I became a flight attendant with the same company Gary worked for. Needless to say after I graduated from flight attendant training I began thinking about him again. More than anything I wished I had handled things with him differently. All I could do was worry about running into him again! It was inevitable. It didn’t matter if the airline I worked for was a big company with almost twenty thousand flight attendants or that flight attendants worked with different people all the time. The interesting thing about being a flight attendant is that while we may not see a person we’ve worked with for years after a trip, out of nowhere they’ll pop up on the other side of the cart, as if no time had passed, other than that person gaining a little weight or losing a little hair. Just when we begin to feel comfortable and think that maybe, just maybe, the one we’d like to avoid has quit or retired or transferred to another base, his or her name will appear on a crew list. One minute we could be working with a flight attendant on the prowl, and the next time we see her she’s the mother of three, sharing sippy-cup tips on the jump seat. Or even worse, one minute a pilot is dating a regular girl with a bad attitude on the ground, and the next time he speaks to her, she’s wearing a matching uniform—but lying about it.
I had just moved into the crash pad with Georgia and Victor, the mankini-wearing, drugged-out landlord, when out of the blue Gary called to “check in and say hello.” Too embarrassed by my past rants against the airline industry to tell him the truth—that at that moment I was laying over at a Holiday Inn not too far from the airport in Oklahoma City—I did the next best thing. I lied. I didn’t want him to know I had just finished eating breakfast for dinner at a Denny’s across the street by myself as I was the extra flight attendant on a trip and therefore on my own for the next three days, so I told him everything was great, life couldn’t be better, and yes, I was in fact still working for the watch company. I went on and on about a life I no longer had or even wanted. I was on a roll, describing in detail things I hadn’t done in over a year with people I no longer worked with, and Gary quietly listened. I don’t remember how the conversation ended, but it’s safe to assume that it did and when it did I was relieved. After that I dreaded flying the Miami run even more than I had before, which I didn’t think was possible.
If I did find myself walking through the Miami airport, the most chaotic airport in the world and home of the most amazing people-watching on Earth, I did so briskly and never stopped for anything other than what was absolutely necessary. Rice and beans at La Carreta and a
café con leche
from Café Versailles. While I’d nervously wait in line for the most delicious Cuban takeout food, I’d scan the horizon for a familiar face, always scoping out what I could duck behind, maybe a magazine stand or group of passengers, in order to avoid an unwanted run-in. At some point I knew I’d have to face my fears, but I kept hoping that day would come later, not sooner. While I waited for the inevitable to happen I imagined all the different scenarios that could possibly occur—well, all but the one that actually did occur.
I had boarded a flight in Dallas with my crew. The plane was in the process of being catered and cleaned when I spotted a pair of aviator Ray-Bans on the galley counter. Naturally I picked them up, tried them on, and walked into the lav to check myself out in the mirror. As I stood with the door open, reapplying lipstick, I heard a familiar voice behind me say, “Excuse me. I think I left my sunglasses on board.”
Oh boy. I swallowed hard and slowly turned around.
“I guess these are yours then.” I took the shades off and handed them back to Gary. “Long time no see,” I said, cringing as soon as the words were out of my mouth. I didn’t know what else to say!
“W-what are you . . . when did you—”
“Last year.” I didn’t want him to know I had been lying the last time we spoke, so I did it again. I told him exactly what had happened, only I shaved off a few years. Then I did what any other flight attendant would do when a person dares to step onto the precious galley floor. I offered him a drink and prayed he’d go back to his seat, which turned out to be the left seat on a flight to Palm Springs. Gary had been upgraded to captain. I congratulated him and wished him the best.
“I can’t tell you how odd it is to see you here, on an airplane, in uniform. You really look great!” he said.
I blushed. “Thanks. You do, too.” He did. Even better than before.
When he took off his hat and scratched his head, I caught a glimpse of a young boy holding a bat and wearing a red jersey in a photograph tucked inside the clear plastic pocket on the underside of his cap, which is where single pilots keep their business cards and the others keep family photos. A way to distinguish one hat from another since they all look alike hanging on the back of the cockpit door during flight.
“So . . . why did we lose touch again?” he asked earnestly.
“Umm . . .” I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I stared at the oven door for a count of three, as if seriously pondering the question, and then looked directly into his beautiful brown eyes and lied again. “I don’t remember.” What can I say? I was on a roll.
“Would you like to get together . . . again, sometime?” he asked. I couldn’t believe it. I’d said terrible things about flight attendants, stopped calling him, become a flight attendant, and lied about it, and he still wanted to see me again.
Of course I said yes. Because I knew Gary was a great guy! I could only assume I’d grown up over the last three years. Surely I could appreciate all he had to offer this time around now that I was in a completely different place in life. Now that I was older and wiser and well traveled, I figured Gary and I had to have a lot more in common. So I scribbled my number across a beverage napkin and told him to call me for a second time.
Midway through round two of our first date, it was clear that we had a problem. Gary was, well, not very exciting. But he was thoughtful, in that he brought flowers and always opened doors. He was the kind of pilot that would grab crew bags out of the first-class closet and line them up on the jet bridge for a quick escape. But if I wasn’t talking, we weren’t talking—talk about stressful! At least with the CEO I could share funny stories, but if Gary hadn’t already heard my funny stories, he’d heard of ones just like them. I knew he was a catch, so I tried not to let that deter me. But as he walked me to my hotel door at the end of the night I found myself dreading the kiss good night. Determined not to let a little thing like chemistry come between us, I kissed him anyway! I felt nothing. Really putting my all into it, I tried again. But we just weren’t meant to be.
Years later, during a vacation in Puerto Vallarta, my mother turned to me and announced, “There’s something I need to tell you.” When my mother starts a conversation like this, what follows next is guaranteed to be frightening.
“Dad’s dead?” I said half-jokingly.
“Worse.” My mother covered her face with her hands and I could have sworn I heard her say something crazy like “I wrote Gary a letter.”
“You did what?!”
“Right after you completed flight attendant training and moved to New York. You just seemed so sad and lonely. I was worried about you. I thought maybe if he knew you were a flight attendant he might call and offer to take you out.”
I leaned back in my seat and adjusted the air vent so I could breath. I wanted to kill her. The fact that Gary had acted surprised to see me on the airplane and never even let on about the freaking letter just proved to me that he might be even crazier than my mother! Or one of the nicest guys in the world. Either way, it meant that he lied, too, kind of, so in a way we were even, sort of.
I haven’t seen Gary since, but my mother has. Twice. The first time he was the captain on one of her flights. After years of staring at that stupid photograph, she recognized him right away. She almost died when he walked on board and stowed his bag in the first-class closet. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass me, so she never told him who she was, but she does think he may have known based on the way he lingered around in the galley a lot during the flight. The second time she ran into him—a decade later!—he knew exactly who she was and told her so in the rear galley as she was setting up carts. After she was through telling me all about how great he was, and how he had nothing but nice things to say about me, and how he’s moving to New York and is engaged to a girl who looks, based on a photograph, kind of like me, she exclaimed, “I swear, Heather, you’ll never do better than him!” And she turned out to be right . . . at least as far as pilots were concerned.
E
ARLY ON IN
my career, my roommate Tricia took me to a trendy bar in Manhattan, and a guy sporting Buddy Holly frames and electric blue Puma sneakers leaned over and asked what I did for a living.
“I’m a flight attendant,” I yelled over the pulsing beat of the music, and then I took a sip of my apple martini.
Buddy Holly straightened himself up and walked away. I watched in shock as he crossed the room and made a play for another blonde. I guess she had a more respectable job, since he spent the rest of the night conversing with her.
“Asshole!” Tricia exclaimed. A group of guys who’d gathered around vying for her attention laughed. I pretended to care less, but, really, I was pissed! If I had told him that I was a watch designer, would it have made a difference? Probably.
Being a quick learner, I told the next guy I worked for an airline. That’s it. End of story. When he pressed, I said I handled baggage. (Well, I do—during boarding!) Not only did he stick around, he bought me drinks. Unfortunately he turned out to be a FO-FO. This is what I call the first on, first off. FO-FOs are easy to spot. Like gate lice, they’ll line up against the wall in front of the boarding door in the airport terminal, impatiently waiting to get on a flight before the flight attendants have even had a chance to do so themselves. They’re also the ones that stand up before the seat belt sign is turned off in order to grab their bags out of the bin, crushing anyone who dares to get in their way as they sprint to the deplaning door. I hate to admit it, but I kind of like it when the captain slams on the breaks, sending a couple of FO-FOs stumbling down the aisle. Once I realized I was faced with a FO-FO, I did what any other flight attendant would do: I channeled my inner Buddy Holly guy and walked away, but not without politely excusing myself first.
People like Buddy have formed very strong opinions about flight attendants based on things we have zero control over, like a lack of drink choices or a used crossword puzzle inside the complimentary in flight airline magazine. Stuff like that can make some passengers nuts. Mix in a couple of hours with nothing to do but to sit and stew over the matter, and we’ve got a very unhappy passenger on our hands. And we’re not the Royal British Guard. Sometimes, every once in a while, a passenger pushes us too far and we react. This usually happens around day 4 of flying several days in a row after having to deal with the same complaints over and over again. One frustrated flight attendant I know finally exclaimed, “This is an airplane, not a 7-Eleven!” after a passenger became irate that the airline didn’t carry soy milk. Of course, it’s always the passenger with the problem who will have to be reminded later on in flight that the seat belt sign is on. These are the same passengers who will then come to the false conclusion that we’re picking on them. It never fails: whatever they ask for next, we won’t have, which will lead them to the false conclusion that we’re lying. It doesn’t matter how many great flight attendants this passenger may encounter on future flights, from here on out, we’re all liars and nothing we do or say will change that. If Buddy Holly was one of those, I guess I dodged a bullet.
The other danger of admitting you’re a flight attendant to a potential date is finding one who is now more interested in your job than you. You’ll be asking about them and all they’ll want is to hear about the mile-high club. (To be fair, many people who are not trying to take me home also want to know about the mile-high club.) The not so sexy answer to this is that most people eager to join the club usually fail, because it’s my job to stop it from happening as soon as I become aware of what’s going on. This usually happens after an impatient passenger has complained about waiting in line to use the lav for a long period of time.
“Did you knock?” we’ll ask. Nine times out of ten they’ll ask us to do it for them. I always hate doing this because not everyone tying up the loo is having sex. Some people really just need extra time. Like the woman who cracked open the door as she sat on the commode and asked me to “fetch” her a magazine because she was going to be a while. Trust me: if someone is taking that long in the lav, most of the time it’s just best to find another bathroom. Even if that means walking
all the way
to the back of the airplane. I’m talking to you, first class!
If there is something fishy going on inside the bathroom, flight attendants will order whomever is inside to come out (with their pants up), all the while praying they do as they’re told. The last thing we want is to have to take matters into our own hands and unlock the door for them, thereby getting a glimpse of something we never wanted to see in the first place.
The first couple I ever caught exiting the lav together (in the middle of an afternoon flight, mind you) were both well known in the music industry back in the mid-1990s. Think R&B. The most shocking thing about it for me was that they didn’t even attempt to hide it. Most people will take turns leaving the bathroom, mistakenly thinking that nobody waiting in line will notice the occupied sign immediately sliding back into place after one person exits. But not these two musical wonders. I guess when you perform on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans on a nightly basis, you don’t mind doing what should have been the walk of shame back to your first-class seats. I couldn’t believe it when the one with the killer voice didn’t at least try to fix her hair first.
Over the years I’ve caught red-handed a few other passengers who were trying to join the prestigious club, but membership has been waning in the last ten years. Maybe this is because people are so stressed out by traveling today that doing it at 35,000 feet is the last thing on their minds. Or maybe passengers, like flight attendants, have gotten bigger or have become overly germaphobic. Or perhaps membership only
seems
to be on the decline because I now have enough seniority to hold something other than the red-eye flights, which tend to be popular with those looking to join the club.
One trend I’ve noticed (and, again, maybe it’s the whole germaphobe thing) is that more and more mile-high members are avoiding the bathroom altogether, preferring to do the deed at their seat. They’ll use a blanket to cover up, giggling and wiggling in the process, making a big public spectacle of themselves. As soon as one of us is clued in to what might be going on, we’ll spread the word and each take turns slowly passing by their seat as we investigate the matter further. The couple will smile sheepishly, pretending they’re not doing what they’re oh-so-obviously doing. Or they might not even notice us at all until we stand at their row and loudly clear our throats. One flight attendant decided to make a couple’s initiation into the club a little uncomfortable by continuously walking up and down the aisle with an illuminated flashlight. It’s not actually illegal to engage in sexual activity on an airplane. But it is a federal offense not to comply with crew member instruction. What this means is if a flight attendant asks you to stop doing something, you need to stop doing it immediately or otherwise face the consequences, like authorities getting called to meet the flight. Imagine being in jail and having to tell your cell mate what you’re in for.
Not all passengers are looking to go all the way. A few are happy going just some of the way. I’m convinced that there’s a female exhibitionist flying on the loose after walking in on a woman inside an unlocked lav. She just stood there, totally naked, with a leg up on the counter. I can’t tell you how often people forget to lock the door, but normally they’re still wearing most of their clothes and they’re certainly not smiling when they’re barged in on. Three months later, on a different route, I noticed a flustered passenger running from the direction of the bathroom back to his seat. After inquiring, he told me he’d walked in on a naked woman. Is it a coincidence that she also had a leg up in the air?
A friend of mine chose to ignore a passenger who massaged his seatmate’s breast as he ordered lunch from a menu he held at chest level. What he didn’t realize is we may not be able to see through things but we can certainly see over them. That’s exactly what I told the man who tried to hide a pornographic magazine behind a safety briefing card. The two teenage girls snickering in the row behind him as they stood hovering over his shoulder were a dead giveaway. Later on in the flight I ran into the guy as he exited the lav, practically advertising what he’d been doing by carrying the same rolled-up magazine under his arm. Before I could avert my eyes from the disturbing evidence, he reached into a drawer of ice with what I hoped were clean hands and told me he worked as a producer on adult films. Handing me a business card, he wanted to know if I might be interested in getting involved in his next film—
Pearl
.
“What makes you think I’d be interested in doing something like that?!” I was shocked that he thought I was that kind of girl. Unable to make eye contact, but not wanting to seem overly prude, I busied myself with the cart and waited for an answer.
Smugly he smiled. “It pays five thousand dollars for a week’s worth of work.”
“That’s it?” I asked. Not that it mattered.
Dangling what must have been the golden carrot, he added, “We’re shooting it in Jamaica. Room and board is covered.”
I’ve heard rumors of flight attendants getting involved in this sort of thing on the side, but rest assured, they do not remain employed for long. As you may have noticed, flight attendants talk, and as soon as an airline catches wind of something like a burgeoning adult film career, that flight attendant will be fired. And none of us is willing to risk losing our travel benefits! That’s why most of us became flight attendants in the first place. Obviously Mr. Porn Producer had no idea that airline employees fly for free and get huge discounts on hotels and car rentals around the world—Jamaica included. And that’s not all. Besides deals on airport food, cell phone service, luggage, amusement parks, and SkyMall gifts, we also get discounts on all kinds of crazy things like pet sitters, noise cancellation headsets, trucks, kitchen appliances, flowers, and memberships at gyms and superstores. There are even doctors who give special rates to crew, particularly dentists, dermatologists, and plastic surgeons—and I’m not talking about the ones in Brazil. All because we’re free advertising and come into contact with a lot of people. Best of all, FedEx offers employees at my airline 75 percent off all our shipping needs, which comes in handy when we’re overseas and need to ship something like a piece of furniture back to the States. Betcha a porn star working in Jamaica can’t do that! Not to mention there’s that little thing called longevity, as well as medical and retirement benefits. So while we may not make the big bucks for a week’s worth of work, being a flight attendant does have its perks. And these perks certainly attract men.
Which brings me to the passes. I can always tell a man I’m dating is more interested in my travel perks than in me when he starts planning an extravagant trip on our first date to a place he’s been dreaming about for years. This is equivalent to women talking marriage and babies with men they’ve just met. Talk about a great way to run someone off. What’s worse is when a man tries to barter a room in his apartment for free flights. I’ve even had a woman jokingly ask if I’d be interested in polygamy just to get her hands on my passes. After we both stopped laughing, she inquired again. When people who are after my passes realize they’ve entered the point of no return and it’s not looking good, they might come clean with their intentions. One guy informed me that his college roommate’s mother had been a flight attendant, so he knew how the whole non-rev thing worked (wink wink). So as not to lose me, he then brought up how little I made as a flight attendant and said, “I can make it worth your while.” I’m not selling passes, I’m looking for love! This is my cue to down my drink and walk out, never to look back again. Sometimes I’ll even get the woe-is-me routine. One guy needed my passes because his sister was sick and she needed to see a doctor out of state. It’s not hard to tell when a man wants me for me or if he’s just looking to fly for free.
There’s a popular phrase,
MARRY ME, FLY FREE!
I bought a T-shirt with that written across its back when I was working with Sun Jet. The phrase has since been changed to
MARRY ME, FLY STANDBY!
but I’m thinking
MARRY ME, GET 20% OFF AT THE APPLE STORE
might be a better promise. Let me put it to you this way, Bob, the stylish pilot, actually saves his standby passes for people he hates. Then he can gleefully relish when they get stranded in Senegal for ten days.
Buddy passes bring out the worst in strangers. I’ve had all kinds of people I didn’t know hit me up for one: a mailman, a dental assistant, a lady working at a hardware store, a cabby with a wife still living in Pakistan, even a priest. Most people are surprised to learn that our buddy passes aren’t free. In fact, nowadays a buddy pass costs almost as much as a full-fare ticket, because we have to pay taxes and fees on them. If I were to fly a friend on a buddy pass across the country in economy class, it would cost me nearly $200! And the money is automatically docked from my paycheck. That might not sound like a lot to some, but that’s a new pair of work shoes for me. Anyway, would you trust a stranger to pay you back the money you need for the month’s rent, food, and gas? Well, I’m no different, even if the stranger is a rabbi.
Flight attendants at my airline only get so many passes a year to distribute to family and friends. We don’t just hand out tickets to anyone we want. We have to enter their names and Social Security numbers in a database. At my airline once a name is on the list it cannot be removed to make room for another name for twelve months. The only people who fly for free on a pass (or almost free, depending on the cabin they’re sitting in and where they’re going) are parents, spouses, and children under the age of eighteen, unless they’re in college and then they can fly until they’re twenty-one. Not even Grandma gets a break! And free applies only to coach seats on domestic flights, which are usually full, unless it’s January, February, September, or October. Don’t even think about traveling during a holiday or summer month. Even weekends are tough. If coach is full, even as an airline employee I have to pay to sit in first class. That’s about eighty bucks on a cross-country flight, which, while really inexpensive in comparison to what a first-class ticket costs, adds up. Keep in mind most airline employees’ midmonth check is about $500. We need that money to pay bills, not sip champagne.