By Alison Roach
It’s summertime — or at least every once in a while the weather is decent enough to feel like it is. Maybe you’re starting a summer job; you are a starving student, after all. Maybe you’re taking more shifts at that restaurant, or you’re dragging yourself to the mall every day to help hordes of squealing teenage girls find that perfect tank-top and low rise jeans ensemble. I have a summer job too, but it’s a little different from the classics.
On my school breaks, I’m a flight attendant.
It is really not as awesome as it sounds. First of all, let’s just clear a couple of things up. No, I do not personally get to fly anywhere spectacular. If you’re into exotic British Columbian destinations like Bella Bella, Powell River, or Trail, I’m your girl. Hawaii, or the south of France? Not so much. No, I do not make insane amounts of dollars. It’s definitely better than minimum wage, but it’s not a salary that affords designer sunglasses, or aged bottles of whiskey. No, I don’t wear a little hat and a short skirt; this isn’t the 1960s and PanAm has been out of business for ages. Finally, no, I am not a member of the mile-high club. You’re hilarious.
The truth is, my job is better than most. It’s a grown-up job: something that people turn into an actual career and do for the rest of their lives. But because it’s a grown-up job, I actually have to act as one, which is sometimes not so fun. For your consideration, I present the hours: my average work day is between 10 and 12 hours, with a personal record of 15 hours. The check-in time tends to be before eight in the morning, sometimes before six. All this translates into me not being able to stay up past 10 p.m. The lesson here: if you force yourself to act like an old person, you end up actually acting like one. Sorry friends, I cannot go to the bar tonight, because I will be asleep by the time we get there. If, by some miracle, I do make it to the bar, I have learned the hard way what trying to go to work the next day with even the slightest of hangovers is like: trapped in a bumpy plane for hours is a bad call.
The second part of my job deals with passengers. Most people seem to overlook the fact that being a flight attendant doesn’t only entail being on the plane; it means being responsible for everyone else on that plane. As anyone in customer service can tell you, dealing with people is the best part of the job, and sometimes the worst, too. I have met some very interesting people on my flights: Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, a handful of local hockey players, an author who asked me to read his book, a group of Swedish bird-watching enthusiasts, and an SFU alumnus (who shall remain nameless) who lived in residence at the same time as premier Christy Clarke — apparently Christy knows how to party. Nine out of 10 passengers are complete sweethearts. The other 10 per cent can be a little challenging.
Considering the fact that airplanes have been around for quite a while, some people know surprisingly little about flying on them. There was a woman one flight who seemed genuinely shocked when I told her she couldn’t use her phone on the plane (“Not even when we’re in the air?”). About five passengers each day completely ignore the carefully placed seat belts on their chairs. A passenger once asked me if I could ask the pilots to stop doing “so much of this,” which she then represented by making several swooping motions with her arms stretched out into wings. Unless she would have liked to go somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean instead of to Vancouver, there was nothing I could have done to accommodate her. There are starers, there are nervous flyers who act like you’re personally trying to murder them, there are people who simply do not believe in the unspoken “one complimentary snack per person” common courtesy rule, and every once in a while, there’s a groper. Sometimes, it feels like “flight attendant” isn’t a very appropriate title. Perhaps something like “sky waitress” would be more fitting, maybe “air babysitter” or “plane slave.”
The most important thing I’ve learned being a 19-year-old girl in a grown woman’s job is that you need to be able to adapt. You need to be able to be nice, but sometimes, you just have to be a bitch. I’ve been told by a passenger that I was “as cute as a button” and “a very polite young lady.” I’ve also made a drunken woman 25 years my senior cry when I took away her contraband bottle of wine. What is true in other jobs is also true of this one: people will think it’s easy to manipulate you and ignore you, and the only way to convince them this is not the case is to show them. Nobody respects a pushover, and without respect, I can’t do my job very well. I am trained and paid to handle any situation that may come up, and to possibly save lives in the process. If a passenger doesn’t bother to listen to where the exits are, or pretends they don’t know that they can’t use your iPod during take-off, how am I supposed to do that?
I really do love my job. I get to fly every day. I get to see British Columbia from the air, which, two minutes out from Vancouver, is uninhabited, wild, and beautiful. I get to stay in hotels and work with pilots who have flown all over the world (for the record, they can really drink). I’ve seen a fighter jet being refueled mid-flight, and taken a baby black bear up to its new home at the top of Haida Gwaii. I’ve learned some sign language from a passenger who could before only speak to me in smiles, and I’ve flown over the Rockies at sunset, an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
Having a grown-up job is challenging. Trying to exercise any sort of authority over a group of people old enough to be your parents — even grandparents — isn’t always easy. Trying not to become hardened and bitter in the process is even more difficult. In customer service, it’s easy to start disliking people as a whole when you have to deal with them all day, but I think it’s a fair trade. After all, I do get to scan my fingerprint to get through the door to work every day, which makes me feel like a spy. And I get to wear a snappy silk neck scarf. It might not be PanAm, but flying for a living is still pretty fucking cool. So please, if you’re flying anytime soon, be nice to the lady or gentleman patiently making the announcements for the sixth time that day. Try to listen when they tell you where the oxygen masks are, and thank them when they bring you snacks.
You can’t even imagine how much we appreciate it.
