Authors: Heather Poole
At Sun Jet a week didn’t go by when passengers weren’t being kicked off our flights. One such fool locked himself inside the lavatory seconds prior to departure.
“Sir, are you okay in there?” a colleague asked, knocking on the bathroom door. “You need to come out now! We’re about to depart!”
When the passenger refused to exit or respond to our calls, my colleague did exactly what we had been taught in training and unlocked it from the outside. As she pushed open the door, a guy jumped five feet into the air, causing the needle shoved into his arm to pop out, blood splattering everywhere, including all over my colleague, who immediately ran off the airplane. I’m surprised she didn’t quit her job right then and there. The airplane got pulled out of service—and the passenger probably wound up enjoying a beer with the inbound crew, I’m sure.
A few days later, while helping to clean the airplane, a flight attendant stuck her hand deep inside a seat back pocket and discovered a used and haphazardly discarded needle. I shudder to think what would have happened if one of our unaccompanied minors had found it. I wondered if the needle had belonged to the infamous porn star who came on board scantily dressed with bruises all over her malnourished body, the one who had draped herself all over every overly excited male passenger who recognized her, and they all did, including the two old geezers in the cockpit who wouldn’t release her from their grip until she agreed to say “cheese” for their camera.
Drug addicts and porn stars weren’t our only problems. The elderly were out of control as well. While prepping the cabin for an emergency landing—
an emergency landing!
—an elderly woman screamed, “Where’s my muffin? I want my muffin! I don’t care what the hell is going on with this damn plane!” After the aircraft was safe and sound on the ground, I turned the TV on at home and witnessed the old bat still making a stink about her damn muffin to a local news reporter.
And then there was the eighty-something-year-old woman who decided to disrobe after takeoff because she “wanted to get off the bus.” I don’t make the connection, either. But she attempted to do this by wrapping her wrinkled fingers around an emergency exit door handle while screaming, “Let me off this thing!” I’m not sure which scared the passengers more, seeing someone so frail freaking out nekkid or watching a young male coworker wrap himself around her uncovered lady bits to try with all his might to unsuccessfully pry her fingers off the door—a door that cannot be opened in flight regardless of how badly an elderly nudist may want to get off.
After I grew accustomed to working with the traveling public, passengers became the least of my worries. Once, while taxiing to the gate, I’ll never forget how scared I felt as smoke began to fill the cabin. Passengers quickly grabbed their bags and managed to exit the aircraft without further incident. The smoke dissipated before maintenance arrived. They never did figure out what could have caused it. But they did a great job of giving up on solving a “problem” they couldn’t find.
“I am not flying a broken airplane!” the captain, an older guy with a couple of airlines under his belt, shouted to someone over the phone. Because he said it like he meant it, I gave him a thumbs-up. He gave me a wink. The company gave him an ultimatum. Cursing under his breath, he hung up the phone and growled, “Tell the agent we’re ready to board.” An hour later we were back in the air on our broken plane.
Things were run so badly at Sun Jet I’d actually get nervous when I didn’t hear the computerized voice in the cockpit calling out, “Terrain, Terrain, pull up, pull up!” from the other side of the door when I was strapped in my jump seat on approach. Once a jump seat fell off the wall during descent. The two flight attendants sitting beside the cockpit door followed procedures and moved the first row of passengers to the floor. There was nowhere else to put them. Surprisingly, and without argument, the passengers did exactly as they were told. They lay down flat on their backs. The crew placed their legs over the passengers and manned the exit doors from the closest passenger seats.
Each Tuesday at the Long Beach airport, our airplanes were greeted by a middle-aged man in a dark suit. For most airlines, FAA inspectors check employees’ flight manuals to make sure they’re up to date and dole out hefty fines if they’re not. At Sun Jet, we never once handed over our manuals; we usually handed over the plane. Well, just for a couple of hours until maintenance could come and change the white lights that led to red lights that did not lead to an emergency row, but instead led to a row two rows behind the exit.
The airline wasn’t always to blame. Half the time it was our passengers keeping the FAA on their toes. Ten life vests had to be replaced after a group of high school teenagers decided to inflate them midflight during spring break weekend. Then there were the passengers who liked to take home souvenirs from the flight, things like fire extinguishers, ashtrays, first-aid kits, whatever they could get their sticky fingers on. These are all considered “no-go items.” That means the flight cannot depart without them. Regular airlines might have replacements in stock. Not Sun Jet! We’d have to wait until one of the flights scheduled to land at midnight in Dallas could be sent to rescue us. At that point the drinking game would change. It became last flight back to Dallas wins.
But the craziest thing about working for Sun Jet had nothing to do with any of that. It wasn’t even the time I had several passengers light up cigarettes because they thought it might be their last flight. No, the craziest thing about working for a charter airline was that I enjoyed it. I did! What’s not to love about a job that allows you to sleep in every single morning? Who wouldn’t love working twelve days a month—if that? Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I
loved
serving drinks and picking up trash (and I’m not talking about my ex-boyfriends), but I did appreciate the flexibility, the freedom, the camaraderie, and the excitement of not knowing what the day would bring, as well as leaving that day behind as soon as I stepped off the plane. As for the drama, it always made for a great conversation piece at a party or over dinner with friends. So when I overheard two coworkers whispering about an upcoming airline interview for a major commercial carrier, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. It’d only be for a little while, until I found something else—maybe something in sales.
And that is how I came to walk into my third airline interview with grace and confidence, completely prepared for anything. I had experienced it all, and then some, in only three months at Sun Jet. My makeup had been professionally applied, my hair swept up into a conservative updo with absolutely no frizzies, a flight attendant no-no. During the group interview, I made sure to pepper my answers with the phrase “good customer service.” I threw in the word “flexible” as often as possible. And I stressed that I wanted a career, not just a job, with an airline I could be proud of. That got me a real smile, not once but twice. When they handed me a PA card and asked me to read it out loud, I didn’t for a moment remove what I imagined to be a first- and business-class smile. Then came The Question. Besides meeting new people and traveling, why did I want to become a flight attendant? I told them I found the flexible lifestyle appealing. When they asked how I prepared for the interview, I showed them my comfortable yet stylish navy blue heels and let them know where they could find them on sale. I even outwitted them with an answer to a trick question: “Answer the one question you thought we might ask but didn’t.”
One guy had actually confessed all his negative traits when posed the same question. Me, I said, “When can you start training is the question. The answer is today. But I’m flexible with whatever training date you have available.”
With an answer like that, how could they resist?
During the psychological evaluation, I made a point of describing my character on the front side of the page the exact same way my family and friends would describe me on the flip side, whether or not I agreed. My sister didn’t count. Seriously, besides her, I got along with everyone just fine!
Five minutes later I found myself sitting in an unmarked white van with two other wannabe flight attendants, currently a bartender and a nurse, all of us on our way to “medical” across the street. I knew for a fact that I had been hired.
“Medical” is the one and only word a hopeful flight attendant wants to hear at an airline interview. It means the airline is interested. It means there will be a scale to stand on in the near future. As long as the applicant can lift a required amount of weight, reach into an overhead bin to grab the emergency equipment, and pass an eye, ear, and drug test—and a background check—with flying colors, a training date will be assigned. Because of my brief experience at Sun Jet, I knew just how important it was to get the first training date possible.
At an airline, seniority is everything. Everything. It determines the type of trips you’ll get and whether you’ll be stuck on reserve or forced to work holidays for the rest of your life. It can make or break your career. And seniority is determined by class hire date, so it’s absolutely essential to accept the earliest flight attendant training class you’re offered. Unless the airline discovered something about me that I didn’t know—like my being a felon or an illegal alien—I left medical knowing I’d been accepted to training. What I didn’t know was when training would start. Most airlines will offer classes right away, with a new class starting each week. That’s why I planned to give Sun Jet one week’s notice. They weren’t thrilled. Three of us were leaving for the same reason.
Little did I know that less than a year later, ValuJet would crash into the Everglades causing the flying public to lose confidence in low-cost carriers. In 1998, Sun Jet entered bankruptcy court, only to reemerge briefly as Southeast before going out of business forever. At the time I was thankful to work for an airline I could be proud of with the firm and comforting knowledge that the open sky was just a fun and temporary pit stop on the way to a real career, something in . . . oh, I don’t know. I had a bachelor’s in psychology, after all. I could figure it out later!
Y
OU PACK IT,
you lift it.” That’s the mantra of flight attendants worldwide. One of the most common misconceptions about flight attendants is that it’s our job to lift heavy passenger bags into overhead bins. This is not true. We have no problem finding a space for your bag. We’ll happily turn a few bags around to make room. We may even
assist
in lifting the bag. Note the emphasis on the word “assist,” as in we’re not doing it for you. We’re lifting it together. It’s a team effort. Seriously, you are a key part of Operation Bag-in-the-Bin. I’m sorry—and I’m sorry I always have to say I’m sorry—but take a little responsibility here. You pack it, you lift it. And please stop yelling at me!
Here’s the deal. What you pack and whether you check your bag or carry it on can drastically affect the outcome of your trip. Don’t make travel more stressful than it has to be. Play it safe and do what flight attendants do. When it comes to preparing for a trip, we’re experts. We travel light with just a roll-aboard and a tote bag, even when we’re packing for days at a time. The secret is rolling. Rolling instead of folding leaves clothes wrinkle-free. Our other tricks? I always coordinate my outfits around footwear—a comfy kick-around pair for exploring the destination by day and something dressy for dinner and a show at night. Undies, socks, bikinis, whatever can be wadded up, are housed inside shoes. No space goes unused. To make things simple, pack black and be done with it. So what if you wear the same outfit over and over? That’s what easy-to-pack accessories are for! Scarves and jewelry can completely change boring black into something fab. And whatever gets left behind becomes the perfect excuse to go shopping for something new! On vacation we get to know the locals at a Laundromat. What better place to read a guidebook or ask around for a great place to eat?
Of course, I did not know any of this in 1995 when I signed a clipboard and a FedEx guy handed over an official-looking letter from the airline. I’d been waiting for it since my interview two weeks earlier. I ripped open the envelope and read, “Congratulations!” My heart began to beat faster.
The letter welcomed class 23 to flight attendant training—round two in less than a year for me. Upon completing a seven-and-a-half-week course, I, along with two pieces of luggage—wait, did that say . . . two pieces? I read the sentence again. Two pieces. And it was written in big black bold print, so I knew the airline meant business. If that wasn’t bad enough, neither bag could weigh more than eighty pounds, and they would both accompany me on an “exciting journey” to a new crew base the moment I completed training. No time to go home and repack. If you’ve ever had to pack two plus months’ worth of clothing into two suitcases, you probably know the exact feeling I had in the pit of my stomach. How the heck could I possibly whittle my entire life down to 160 pounds? I read on. Did the airline really expect me to memorize more than five hundred airport city codes before training even began? How was I going to fit that in when I had so much—er, little—packing to do?
I sat down on my closet floor, staring up at my clothes. I couldn’t decide what to take. I had no idea what I might need at a crew base. I didn’t even know where in the country my base would be. So I ended up doing what any other twenty-four-year-old might do. I threw it all in: rubber flip-flops and furry snow boots, strapless sundresses and cashmere sweaters, a little black number and some workout clothes—you know, just in case. Who knew what kind of excitement awaited me? I threw in some costume jewelry for good measure, then plopped down on top of the first bag and tried . . . to zip . . . it shut! I couldn’t get it closed. Frowning, I imagined myself passing through the pearly gates of the flight academy. A larger-than-life flight instructor would place my suitcases on an industrial-size scale and send me straight back home to Mom and Dad. Because that’s exactly where I’d end up if I didn’t make it through. I took out the snow boots and tried again. I removed the flip-flops and still I couldn’t get the thing shut. One less sweater—make that two—and I was finally good to go. My mother promised to box up what I couldn’t get inside and mail it to me later.
Three weeks after my flight attendant interview, with two thousand borrowed dollars in the bank (the amount suggested by the airline for incidentals, even though room and board were covered), I said good-bye to my old life and walked onto a small campus setting just five miles away from a major U.S. airport. I felt nervous and insecure, but my hair looked good, my makeup looked good, and I looked good. That’s all that mattered.
Though my luggage toppled over every five steps, I somehow managed to pass through the flight academy’s automatic doors without a hitch. Once inside, the place looked like nothing special, just a regular hotel lobby. A check-in counter was to my right, and sofas and wingback chairs were scattered about the open room. Straight ahead, through floor-to-ceiling windows, I made out a deserted swimming pool, a volleyball net, and a barbecue pit. To my left, I spotted a bar. A bar! Who knew training was going to be so much fun? A winding staircase on the right led to a landing overlooking the room, which was slowly beginning to fill with people.
“Excuse me,” I whispered, my palms sweating, as I made my way through small cliques of future colleagues. At the desk, I checked in, then slapped a hello my name is heather sticker across my chest. A shiny gold key and a packet full of papers slid across the counter, and I turned back to the room, not exactly sure what to do next. As I looked around, trying to play it cool, I realized everyone in the room looked amazing. A stunning black-haired, ruby-lipped, perfectly pale woman walked toward me, and suddenly I felt even less special.
“Hi,” she said, flashing a cheerful smile. “I’m Georgia.”
Georgia, it turned out, was a real-life beauty pageant runner-up from Louisiana who used words like “fixin’,” as in, “I’m fixin’ to get a drink. Ya want one?”
“Sure!” I parked my bags against the wall.
At the bar I ordered a Diet Coke. We moved back to the lobby to sit, and while we talked, we watched in awe as people continued to check in. It looked like there were at least fifty of us milling about. Like so many of my glamorous soon-to-be best friends, Georgia had always dreamed about becoming a flight attendant. She wouldn’t let anything stop her from making that dream a reality, not even a jealous boyfriend, who, I quickly learned, had just moved to North Carolina.
“I told him I’d see him before he knew it, but he ain’t happy, not one little bit. Men!” she snorted, and then took a sip of Diet Dr Pepper.
Georgia was not alone. All of us had left someone behind: family, friends, loved ones. I’d only been dating Paul for six months, and he’d actually been more than supportive of my new career choice. Probably because it gave him the opportunity to work around the clock in order to get both his landscaping and car-detailing businesses off the ground. To be perfectly honest, though, I had been looking for a way out of the relationship for a while now.
“It’s just that he’s really sweet and I don’t want to hurt his feelings,” I told Georgia. I made a face. “I’m not big on confrontation.”
“And that, sweetie, is why the airline hired you!”
I didn’t understand it then, but Georgia may have been on to something. At that moment, all I knew was that we were spilling our life stories and we’d only known each other for ten minutes! Already we were the best of friends.
“You know, we oughtta room together!” Georgia said.
I was thrilled and relieved. But it turned out that we weren’t allowed to pick our roommates; they were preassigned. I promised to meet Georgia for dinner after we each dropped our bags in our rooms. I wasn’t sure how long that would take her to accomplish. By the time I arrived, I’d thinned my luggage down to seventy-eight pounds even, but Georgia’s version of packing light seemed to involve eight humongous bags that weighed about three tons. Each.
With a room key pressed firmly in the palm of my hand, I put on my brightest first-class smile and tried as best I could to roll my bags into the elevator without crashing into anyone—mission unaccomplished. Two floors up, I stood in front of my new home, slid the key into the keyhole, and took a deep breath. The moment I cracked the door open, I was blown away by one big, “Howdy! I’m Linda.”
I stood speechless in the hallway, taking Linda in: teased bouffant, orange tan, turquoise jewelry, teensy-tiny blue-jean skirt, electric blue cowboy boots, matching blue eye shadow. My roommate, the person with whom I would spend the next two months in a space that looked to be the size of a small college dorm room, was a cowgirl. Well, the word “girl” might be a little misleading. Linda actually looked older than my mother. Yeehaw.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Heather,” I finally got out as I reluctantly entered and plopped down on a hard twin bed. “Guess this one’s mine.”
Linda picked up the phone and I reminded myself not to judge a book by its cover. But it was just so hard not to as I noted cowboy boots in every color lining the closet floor. While I tried to make do with half of a tiny closet, I overheard Linda saying to someone that this was her second chance at life. That got me wondering, what went wrong the first time around? As I hung up seventy-eight pounds of casual business attire, the dress code for the flight academy, I listened to Linda telling at least ten different people she loved them. When she hung up the phone, I thought I saw her wipe away a tear.
“You okay?” I asked.
Nervously she laughed. “Sorry. Those were my grandkids. I miss them so.”
Grandkids! No way. My cowgirl roommate was also a grandmother? Could we have had less in common?
On any good reality show, the first exciting event is the makeover episode. That first day of training was all about grooming. It’s common knowledge that flight attendants must be willing to do two things: cut their hair and go anywhere. Well, I have crazy hair. It’s half wavy and half frizzy. Weather, water, styling products, and the power level of the hair dryer all make a huge difference when it comes to looking presentable. Since I hadn’t wanted to have any problems at training, I’d gotten my long blond locks chopped at a professional salon before an amateur hired by the airline could get a hold of me. The result, in my opinion, looked amazing. But because frizzies on a flight attendant are unacceptable, regardless of humidity, I was schooled on how to smooth and tame my unruly hair by creating a classic French twist with three hundred bobby pins and an entire can of hairspray. It looked pretty. My scalp hurt. I kept my mouth shut.
Georgia, of course, soared through Grooming 101 without having to change a thing. Our instructors used words like “beautiful, gorgeous, so graceful,” to describe her, practically trailing her with a standing ovation. Flawless, a poster child for the airline, she had mastered the appearance of perfection early on in her pageant career. Why nobody hired her to run the grooming department, I don’t know. The girl could work wonders with a bit of gloss, fake lashes, and a push-up bra. The instructors constantly instructed the rest of us to take note of the way she lined her lips, highlighted her cheeks, arched her brows, accented her eyes, and wore her hair. Some female classmates began to resent the adulation thrust upon Georgia, while others, particularly the men in class, adored her, taking each and every beauty tip to heart.
Linda, on the other hand, got a complete makeover. No one was surprised, not even Linda. We’d been divided into groups of ten and had been escorted to a salon on campus. Well, when I say “salon,” I mean a room at the end of a long hallway that felt more like a mini cosmetology school than any salon I’d ever been to. Linda was the last one to take a seat in front of the brightly lit mirror. Though her jaw remained tense throughout the hour-long ordeal, she did not complain about the transformation, not once, not even when the frighteningly plastic grooming technician in charge wiped away the frosted blue coloring shellacked across her lids and demanded she never wear that horrid color again. Mauve replaced blue. Her hair was de-poofed. Glitzy earrings were exchanged for something more conservative, no bigger than a quarter in size. Because we were only allowed to wear two rings per hand, Linda removed four gaudy hunks of gold. As for shoes, cowboy boots don’t work well with the uniform, so Linda took a taxi to a nearby mall and purchased something sensible, in leather, with at least an inch heel—no straps or buckles allowed.
“Don’t forget that appearances are to be maintained at the flight academy from this day forth,” announced the instructor before dismissing us at the end of the day.
“Even after hours and on weekends?” We all turned to see who dared ask such a question. Joseph, a big guy who looked like he might be more comfortable wearing sweats, smiled sheepishly.
“Even after hours and on weekends,” stated the instructor, which would come to echo in my head late at night when I’d literally run to the gym, ducking in doorways whenever I thought I heard someone coming for fear I’d get caught wearing running shorts and a T-shirt outside the workout room. I had no idea how to get there without breaking the rules.
“Ladies!” one of our instructors would call out often whenever he’d enter the classroom. Back in the day he had probably been a catch. But the years had taken their toll, particularly where his head was concerned. He barely had any hair left. Khaki Dockers and a polo shirt with the company’s logo embroidered across the pocket, the official flight instructor uniform, paired with white running sneakers didn’t do him any justice, either. The first time we heard him say it, we sat staring blankly, eagerly awaiting his next word. It never came. He stood behind the podium slowly scanning the room, making eye contact with each and every one of us. He didn’t look pleased. At one point I wondered if he’d forgotten what he wanted to say. But we quickly came to learn what it meant. We would frantically and in unison dig compact mirrors out of our purses, check our lips and reapply, even if we really didn’t need to. If the guilty party did not make amends—now, as in right now—she’d get dismissed from class forever. Lipstick, at flight attendant training, was serious business. It had to be worn at all times.