Confessions of a Hostie (3 page)

On the night several of our crew went there, many of those performers paid their respects to family and friends that had passed away in the blasts only days ago, and singers belted out Frank Sinatra tunes with a passion I have never seen before. They let their tears flow freely, and we sat there for hours, watching them, awestruck by their strength. By the time we left the bar, the sun was long up.

We then walked down to the World Trade site. Security was surprisingly lax, and one of the crew members flashed a fake press pass (from Bangkok). We continued walking inside the cordoned-off areas. And we stood there, silent, amongst the smouldering rubble that was once such a symbol of power. No one took photos. No one spoke. Everyone was moved.

From this experience, I learnt how fragile the human life can be, and how senseless these acts of violence are.

In all fairness, I am not as completely self-absorbed as I seem. Nor am I completely oblivious to the difficulties of those less fortunate than myself. I am involved in charity work in a number of poverty-stricken nations. A number of crew work on these projects, and we donate our time and experience, not just goods or money (although we do that too). We have hammered in many, many nails for others – we have funded and helped build houses for orphanages in Asia and Africa.

On the home front I have my own little project going on: I save all the hotel amenities that I have collected from trips, like shampoos, soaps, slippers and lots more, throughout the year and make little gift hampers. I even buy a few extra odds and ends in my travels to add to these hampers. I then deliver them to several nursing homes in my area at Christmas time. I usually take them in a few days prior to Christmas, as I am typically away on Christmas day, going away on one of my trips. Not this year though, I make a note to myself. For once, I have not been rostered to work on Christmas. This year, I get to don my little Santa hat and hand out the hampers on Christmas morning.

I have celebrated Christmas only once at home so far, ever since I began my flying career. That day, I still remember, I took my sack of hampers to the first of the nursing homes. There was a lovely old lady sitting near the home's front door, and we had a little chat. She told me she was so excited about meeting her family – they were on their way now, to meet her and spend Christmas morning with her at the home. When I met the nurse in charge, I explained that I did not have enough hampers for every patient at the home, and that they be handed out to only those that did not have families; people like the lovely lady I had just talked to had family arriving to see her, and they would obviously bring her gifts, I reasoned. The nurse told me that the lovely lady I had just spoken to had been staying at the home for over three years, and every year she waited outside for her family to come. But, every year, no one came for her.

I wept for her. After I had regained some semblance of composure, I offered a hamper to the lovely old lady, then sat with her and chatted for most of the morning.

As for India, all my charity attempts there have only ended in an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. Each time crew have taken either clothing or food into a slum, the slum lords have taken away the goods, and although they promise to distribute them to those who need it, we know that they will sell the things we gave them. The only ones that eventually benefitted from our generosity are those at the top, not the ones who need help. Sometimes life is unfair.

the glamour of being an international flight attendant

It is already time for me to fly out of Mumbai. I am heading back to Singapore, and we have almost finished boarding the passengers. I am refreshed after the well-deserved rest I got in Mumbai. I have even decided to reassess my attitude onboard the aircraft: I will try to show patience; I will try to be courteous; I will try to be understanding. I can only hope that my renewed sense of human respect lasts for the duration of the flight.

No one has grabbed at me or pulled at my uniform yet.

‘So far so good,' I sigh. But then again we have yet to take off.

I have been called so many things in my flying life. Air hostess. Stewardess. A trolley dolly. Hostie.

The new, and more politically correct term, for what I do is ‘flight attendant.' My duties, however, are not as easy to define. Most passengers think all I do is pour tea and coffee for them. They have no idea about some of the situations we flight attendants may be required to deal with. We are first and foremost a safety professional – and there is a lot more we do. We are a security officer, a fire-fighter, a psychologist, a travel agent, a cleaner, a law enforcer, a bartender, an aged-care worker, an announcer, a cook, a diplomat, a promotional spokesperson, a problem solver, a salesperson, a nurse and a child-minder, all rolled into one.

When a passenger addresses me as ‘waitress', I jokingly tell them about some of these other skills, before smiling to say, ‘So, would you like the chicken or the beef?'

Most people think being a flight attendant is an extremely glamorous job. They couldn't be more wrong. Try spending fourteen or fifteen hours getting harassed in a narrow aluminium tube with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

I get pushed, grabbed, prodded, tugged at, coughed on, spat on and vomited on too often to recall. I've even been handed a soiled diaper. Moreover, some of the things I've found in the aircraft's toilets are too graphic to describe here. In fact, some of the things I've seen in the cabin are too graphic to describe here. If someone vomits or a toilet has been treated like a toxic dump there are no commercial cleaners on call at 35,000 feet. We can, at times, lock off a toilet that has been badly violated. However, there are generally only enough toilets onboard to service the first six rows of passengers. Even if there aren't enough serviceable toilets, the passengers will still need to go – and they do go. This next story I am about to tell is almost too incredulous to believe, so I will leave out the explicit details. I will say that on one flight someone used the back galley as a toilet. Not number ones either. Because of hygiene reasons the galley was blocked off, and passengers did not receive any food for the rest of the flight – all because someone (or something) should have been locked up in a cage and not been on an aircraft. We were out in the cabin working, as we do, and no one saw who the culprit was. Based on the evidence, we could tell this was an adult, or at least someone with adult-size toilet habits. Had we, or the passengers for that matter, known who had done it, the intensity of the reprisal would have been proportionate to that of the disgusting act.

Oh the glamour of it all.

Travelling around the world was once seen as quite glamorous, by both the passengers as well as the hosties. I remember my first ever time on a plane. I was eleven then, and a wide-eyed and awe-struck passenger. Everyone on my flight was dressed immaculately. The men looked distinguished in their Cary Grant suits while all the ladies wore Coco Channel and other designer apparel. I remember looking at the stewardesses and thinking about how beautiful they looked. They were the epitome of style and elegance, and I was mesmerised. It was then that eleven-year-old me decided to become a flight attendant.

Oh, how times have changed now. These days we are lucky if the passengers are wearing shoes. Airline travel was once an experience to be savoured, but it is now purely a mode of transportation. And more than often, a passenger's common courtesy is checked in along with the luggage. Crew normally don't put up with passengers that are disrespectful or uncouth. We get really livid at rude passengers, or we get even. One passenger I had the misfortune of serving was extremely rude to all the crew as well as to passengers around him. On landing he mocked the crew by putting a cigarette in his mouth and pretending to smoke it. He knew what he was doing and as the cigarette was not lit he taunted ‘There is nothing you can do. I am not breaking any laws.'

‘Maybe so, sir.'

Unbeknown to him, when we landed, we forwarded his details to customs officials along with the message that he was acting suspiciously during the flight and had refused to eat or drink. Also, we casually hinted that we thought he might be carrying drugs.

As the crew walked away, most of us laughing like an evil Bond villain, we hoped that the rude man would enjoy being body-searched with a rubber glove.

I've heard similar revenge stories from the other crew members. When I first started flying I had never heard of the term ‘air rage'. I have now witnessed so many instances of such rage, so many over-reactions to situations that needn't be responded to with venom.

There are now even reports of ‘flight attendant rage' – yes, it is not just the passengers who can be rude and thoughtless. I have seen some flight attendants be just as bad-mannered as some of the passengers. We often have to put up with a lot, and sometimes crew members do react. In most jobs if something or someone really gets under your skin, you can step outside and get some fresh air and reassess the situation. You can't do that in the confines of an aircraft.

Now, as I walk along the aisles while passengers board, with a calm smile still stuck on my face, one of the passengers stops me to ask for a drink, even before he has even taken his seat. Actually, it is not so much that he asked for the drink that tests my patience, but it is how he asked for it. Some of the passengers from the subcontinent can be a little condescending, and I don't usually put up with such disrespect. However, I control my anger and politely tell him that I will bring him his drink after take-off.

On one of my earlier flights from India, an experienced hostie became frustrated at the rudeness of one such demanding passenger and told him so.

‘In my country you would be a servant,' he had snapped at her.

Without batting an eyelid, she had snapped back, ‘And in my country you would be a taxi driver.'

Touché.

Although I am trying my hardest to avoid confrontation, the man asks me again. And he chooses to ask me while I am in the middle of performing my safety demonstration.

‘Could I have my drink now,' he calls out to me. My problem-passenger alarm bell has begun to ring. I know that pesky passengers like him ask every crew member for drinks. By the time we figure out that each flight attendant has given him three drinks, he is totally hammered – and we are usually only an hour into the flight then.

My guess turns out to be correct. This guy is indeed a pesky, drunken passenger. When we walk up to him to serve him his meal, he clumsily spills a glass of red wine and then leaves his seat to go to the toilet. On his return he proceeds to eat, and then throw up all over himself. In my experience, the number of red wine drinkers who throw up outweigh those who drink white wine – or maybe it seems this way because red is more apparent than white? In any case, my drunken-vomiting-mess-of-a-passenger mumbles something about how I had to clean him up and then passes out. I move those around him to other seats and return to see the man still passed out, with vomit dribbling down his chin.

I discover from our passenger list that this guy is a manager of a rather large company. I consider taking a photograph of him; I could send it to his company with the caption: ‘This is how your manager behaves on flights.'

With utter disdain for the man, I grab a blanket and throw it over him, and then spray the whole area with disinfectant. As gross as he is, at least he is comatose now and is resting in an upright position. I've faced similar situations where people have fallen asleep on their backs, and we've had to constantly monitor them for fear that they may choke on their own vomit. It is very hard to be compassionate towards someone who has self-inflicted afflictions. And who has abused the crew and made our life a misery in the process. However, we are professionals, and we must do what we must do. Besides, the paperwork I'll have to do if this man dies on me is a complete nightmare.

I walk down the aisle, and another passenger directs my attention to a nearby toilet, the same toilet my now comatose man had visited earlier. The passenger points to a little surprise on the bulkhead and floor outside the toilet. The Indian man had not actually made it to the toilet but had thrown up all over the wall and floor before thoughtfully returning to his seat and deciding to share the contents of his stomach with those around him.

It takes me nearly an hour to clean up his vomit from around the toilet area. It takes me longer to recover from the horror.

The perpetrator sleeps through my cleaning hell, and when he does finally wake he presses the call button. With dried vomit on his face he demands, ‘Clean me up.'

My reply is not something I can repeat here.

I am constantly baffled at how rude and ignorant some people can become on an aircraft. I don't know of anyone who enjoys rudeness. I also don't know of any crew member who likes to be touched by passengers (whilst in the cabin, at least). Thank goodness I don't suffer from aphenphosmphobia, which is a fear of being touched, particularly by a stranger. Even so, I am still not fond of being touched by strangers, especially if it is avoidable.

When I'm in a dress shop, and that does happen a lot, I have never gone up to a sales assistant and tapped them on the shoulder, let alone poked or prodded them to get their attention. Yet some people think it their given right to sit in an aircraft seat and do everything from grabbing the nearest flight attendant on the arm to tapping them on their backs.

No, we are not completely deaf. If we are close enough to touch, we are obviously close enough to be talked to.

Once, a woman, whom I knew spoke English, poked me so hard I shrieked out in pain. Then, I lost my cool.

‘You might think you have the right to jab your finger knuckle deep into my ribs, but sweetheart (a word I only ever use when I am angry), I've got news for you! There are better ways to get my attention, like a polite ‘excuse me' or even pressing the call bell.'