R.E.S.P.E.C.T.- What's a Flight Attendant Have to Do to Get it These Days?

A passenger got in my face on an international flight the other night. No surprise she was an American, though increasingly it is people from, oh, everywhere we fly. Ooh the things I coulda woulda said to her. I cursed a litany in my head..long after she was back sulking in her seat watching a movie. I know what she wanted from me. She wanted an apology for her own clumsiness . But frankly, these post 9/11 days, I don't suffer morons gladly. I am bled out of pure altruism, dry as a stone. I could say I need a vacation, but I just got off of one. What I need is a soap box. Excuse me while I hop up-try not to look up my skirt please.

I swore I would never become the kind of flight attendant who refers to "the good old days". When I started flying the women who were already "senior" (our euphemism for having the most miles under our belts), boy did they bore me with that kind of talk. Not always of course. I loved hearing about the golden days of travel, when a passenger was over-dressed and civilized, and a flight attendant was a stewardess...dressed and coiffed to the nines..the seas parted when she strode through the terminal with her exclusive rolling suitcase, unavailable to mere mortals... I even sold an Op-Ed piece to the Hartford Courant, my local newspaper, pining for those lost days.

Of course the bad part was the overall sexist attitudes of society, where the stewardess must be single without children, and quit by the age of thirty which, as all real men know, is right before we hit the wall and lose all our sexual powers. But reality check aside..

What these old gals would opine about, ad nauseum, was dues not being paid. We had to wait years before we got unlimited flying privileges. We had to fly on reserve forever before we got to choose our schedules. (Reserve, for you non-airline people, is essentially indentured servitude to the company, flying wherever and whenever they wanted you..on call at all hours with a bag packed for summer and being sent to a cold winter destination. Good times.)