Category Archives: Flight Attendant

It has been a crazy week. I flew 5 days in a row, which really is too much. It’s too much exposure to the flyin’ public. And, that can make me a little crazy. At the height of my week, I was standing in the jetbridge waiting for the passengers to deplane when this woman walks off the plane. She takes a couple steps forward, then a couple steps back. She does this several times as a look of confusion is plastered on her face. Then she says out loud, “Oh yeah, I didn’t bring the kids with me on this trip.” Oh, people.

This reminds me of another crazy lady named Phyllis. Phyllis is one of my co-workers who I really have no idea how or why she is a flight attendant. I think is has something to do with her driving her husband crazy and he wanting her out of the house…

When I was first hired 5 years ago, I was still living in Phoenix. And, my crew base was in Oakland. So, I had to commute to Oakland from Phoenix in order to start all of my trips. Because, I was new and needed to spend a lot of time in the bay area waiting for my trips, I had to get a “crash pad.” A crash pad is an apartment that 10-15 flight attendants will share and use only when they are in town in order to keep the costs down. There is usually one person who will sign the lease and keep everything “in order.”

This is where Phyllis comes into the picture. Phyllis ran the crash pad. And, here is why she is crazy…if she wasn’t crazy, then she would have been able to hide her strange behaviors. I think that “the crazies” don’t even know that their actions are weird.

Here is a classic conversation with Phyllis:

Day one in the crash pad–I am minding my own business, getting ready for work at the crash pad. I had taken a shower and was finishing getting ready. Phyllis approaches me with the strainer from the shower. It is full of black hairs.

Phyllis-“Ummm, yeah, here at the crash pad we clean out the strainer after we shower.”

Me-“Phyllis, those aren’t my hairs…they’re black.”

Phyllis-“Ummm, yeah, they could be pubic.”

Me-(holding my arms outward to show her)”Phyllis, the carpet matches the drapes, I’m sorry, but, those aren’t my hairs…”

Phyllis-“Ummm, yeah…..”

Me-(I walk away still unaware of her truly crazy status)

Phyllis only eats live or raw food. Consequently, she spends a lot of time in the bathroom. It was never a pretty picture. I know this is true because my friend Kimmy accepted some of Phyllis’ “special green tea” one day. Let’s just say that Kimmy had a miserable 3 days. I don’t like she felt healthier, which is what the crazy lady said would happen if you ate like she ate.

The crazy lady liked to criticize everything that anyone else ate. She almost always started out by saying, “You guys.” Followed by, “you shouldn’t eat that stuff, it is full of all kinds of awful things…” Of course, she was referring to my vegetable stir fry that I bought from Trader Joe’s. Fairly healthy, from my perspective. Let’s not even talk about what would happen if we brought in fast food.

I may have been more prone to accepting her food advice if she didn’t spend hours in the bathroom; or, if she didn’t continuously have a strange green hue to her skin.

Of course, there are many more “Phyllis” stories to be told. Like the time she accused two of the girls of crawling through the back window of the apartment late one night… Or like the many times she would bring her 80 year old snoring husband Sid to stay at the “crash pad” with her…

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This post is dedicated to the many people who have survived Phyllis’ crash pad…especially my friends Nicholas and Kimmy, who were right there with me and have many of their own “crazy lady” stories…

Ok, so I just got home from work and boy, are my wings tired. It was such a hard trip (i.e.–3 hours on the tarmac with a plane full of LA passengers, waiting to take off on a 5 1/2 hour flight…do the math.) Once we got to LA, we still had to work one more flight. Whew. Since our passengers we were picking up in LA were 3 1/2 hours late, I was fully expecting them to be irate. In reality, they were too tired to show any emotion at all. Except for Mr. Jim Bob Rowdy, who was sitting in seat 10D.

Jim Bob Rowdy loved to fly and it showed. 😉 He on numerous occasions told me how much he loved my airline, followed by a “wooo hooo!!!!” and both fists in the air. At first, I honestly was a little annoyed–as were his fellow passengers, many of whom had just spent 8 1/2 hours on the plane. But, as the saying goes, “This airline can clear out a trailer park faster than an F5 tornado!” And, it’s true. I’m not being uppidy, I’m just sayin’… And, in truth, the guy was quite amusing.

I actually love these passengers. They are my peeps. These are the people that I grew up around. There is very little pretense with them. And often times, they have never flown, and don’t really know how to act on a plane. Which can be a real hoot. If the mullet, Jeff Gordon ballcap, and cut-off shorts don’t give you something to chuckle about, it’s just a matter of time before something blog-worthy is said. And, Mr. Rowdy was no exception.

I was passing out the peanuts, and offered him some. Verbatim, here is his response, I shit you not: “Shoot…I got no teeth. I can’t eat them peanuts.” It gets more realistic if you add slight drawl. My co-flight attendant and I spent the next ten minutes in the back galley recreating the scene. And, it just got better and better. I have decided that “Shoot…I got no teeth” is my new slogan.

True to Jim Bob’s nature, on landing he stood up, fists in the air, shouting,”wooo hooo, ya’all rock…yeah!” I just love our passengers…

After I finished my last blog, I had an extremely disturbing realization. Some of my most interesting, or should I say…bizarre… stories from the airplane are not about passengers. They are about other flight attendants.

It really is no surprise to me that, for many people, the profession is full of mystique. Another non-surprising fact, however, is the number of flight attendants on Prozac. People always raise an eyebrow when I tell them what I do for a living. And then the questions begin.

1) So…is this your normal route?
2) So…where are you based at?
3) So…do you have to pay for your hotel rooms?
4) So…I’ve always wanted to be a flight attendant, do you think I could do it?
5) So…I bet you have lots of funny stories about passengers, don’t you?
6) So…what mountain is that?

It’s like we are this highly secretive club, and no one is allowed to know the deep, dark secrets of the flight attendant sister/brotherhood. This is partly true. We do have our deep, dark secrets. And, I will let you in on one of our biggest. There is a large group of flight attendants that are crazy. They aren’t right in the head. And, who knows, they could be serving you your drink…

I think it is important for everyone to realize that about 95% of the time the people that I am working with are strangers. I have just met them. Or, perhaps I have worked with them once before, like 4 years ago. So, it should seem a little odd that I would work with someone who would pull out a photo album of himself working out at the gym. This happened, and then he proceeded to pull out these hand-blown glass beads strung together to make a necklace…think Flintstones. They were more like smooth rocks…very neanderthal. And, he was trying to sell them to me. This same flight attendant also would strip down to his undershirt the moment he got off the plane. I guess he just didn’t care for the uniform.

Then there is the flight attendant who wears plastic dishwashing gloves to serve her drinks. Or, the flight attendant who literally disappears during flights. He will actually slip into a row of seats, sometimes even crawling over passengers to sit at the window seat and stare out the window. There is another flight attendant who has a little photo book full of pictures of her, unsuspecting sleeping passengers, and a little Chucky doll. I must admit that it is funny, but, unusual still the same.

I could go on and on, but it doesn’t paint a positive picture of mental health for the aviation industry…and I don’t want to be responsible for scaring you from flying. That’s why I will refrain (for now anyway) from telling you just how crazy some of the pilots are…

Oh yes, this is my normal route and that is Mt. DILLIGAF (Do I Look Like I Give A Fuck) down there.

Recently, I had to go to recurrent training. For those of you non-airline folk, this is a yearly training day that all flight attendants must attend. Basically, once you requalify to evacuate a plane and perform CPR, all that’s left is about 7 hours of listening to a few people tell all of their war stories while the instructor tries to push us through the standard required information.

Ah, yes, stories from the airplane. Very few of these stories are ever very original. We’ve all heard them before. And the fun really starts when people start telling stories that aren’t even their own. These are airline myths. Kind of like the girl who tanned too much in the tanning bed and cooked her insides…

I think that for some, it really is the only time when they have a captive audience that has to listen to their stories. We are mandated by the government to be in that classroom for 8 hours. Everyone knows it. The longer the stories, the longer the day. It’s really great when someone says, “I know that everyone hates it when someone tell stories, but…” And they proceed to tell the standard, “my friend got a federal fine of $1000 for not standing in her boarding position…” or some other standard airline myth.

I consciously don’t even ask the instructor any questions. I don’t want to provoke a story from someone who thinks they have an illustration for my question. Which got me thinking–I do have some good airline stories. They are true, and they happened to me. This is no second hand stuff. I swear on my Flight Attendant Manual that what I am about to share is not bullshit.
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On one particular flight about 6 years ago, there was someone who I probably can assume was homeless. How she got an airline ticket is beyond me. She was smelly, dirty, wearing mismatched clothes that were not her size, and she was dragging her belongings behind her in a bundle tied together with rope. How she managed to not offend people with her smell or bundle, I’ll never know. But, anyway, she made it onto my plane, and I was not about to be the one to deal with her now.

The flight went just fine. It was a short flight so we didn’t have to smell her for too long. Upon deplaning, a passenger approached me and said, “You may want to check, I think that lady took her seat cushion.” I looked back the couple rows to where she was sitting and sure enough, no seat bottom cushion. So, I went out into the jetway and found her tightening the ropes on her “carryon” bundle. Sticking out the back side was a bright blue seat cushion from the plane.

I said, “Ummm…M’am, I’m sorry, but we are going to need to keep that seat cushion you have tied up in your bundle.” And, I am not kidding, she looked thoughtfully at me and said, “Oh…but, I paid for my seat.” To which I responded, “That’s partly true…but, you paid to sit in your seat. You don’t get to keep your seat, we need it for the next passenger.” She looked at me, nodded at the cushion as if to say, “ok, take it, it’s your’s…”

Let me just say, I received some of the strangest looks from exiting passengers as I was trying to “steal” a seat bottom cushion from a homeless lady. I probably should have just let her have it. But, I had heard in recurrent training that there was this flight attendant from this other airline that got in trouble for allowing passengers to take seat bottom cushions…