by Joe Thomas
While passengers took their sweet ass time deplaning, I craned my neck down the aisle watching 17A and 17B collect their belongings and exit the airplane. The moment they disappeared I called Madison on the interphone, “What’s going on?”
“They are talking to security right now. I will talk to you in a few,” she hung up. I patiently waited until the last passenger walked off the airplane and had to fight back the urge to get on the interphone and threaten everyone’s lives for moving so goddamn slow. I ran to the front of the airplane and looked out onto the jet bridge to find one last passenger being transported up the jet bridge in a wheelchair. Where were my criminals and the police? Madison and I feverishly cleaned the airplane, grabbed our bags, and without saying a word sprinted up the jet bridge to the gate area. I envisioned the two assholes being handcuffed and shipped off to a maximum state penitentiary. As we stepped out into the gate area I was shocked to find nothing happening. No security. No police. No criminals. No Anderson Cooper covering this breaking story. My questions directed towards the gate agent went unanswered as she refused to discuss the outcome with me.
Madison stepped up beside me pulling her luggage, “Joe. The van is waiting on us. Let it go.”
I lowered my head in defeat. I had indeed lost the war. As we passed a large group of passengers waiting to board a flight to Nashville, I noticed the smokers standing in line at the gate next to it being issued seats for an Orlando flight. I was baffled that security let them off the hook allowing them to board another flight within 10 minutes of being busted for smoking. My hopes for justice were squashed in the blink of an eye. I’ve never looked at airport security the same after that incident.
As irrationally as I reacted to that female passenger smoking on my Atlanta flight, the next time I encountered a passenger smoking (I know, twice in one career?) I handled it with more grace and class. Well, as much grace and class as someone like me can conjure up.
On a flight from Boston to Albuquerque, I was working with Abigail and Keegan, and we had the unfortunate luck of having a smoker on the flight who lost the battle of not lighting up for a five hour transcontinental flight. I always enjoyed working with Abigail. Her infectious laugh gave me life which made me spend most of my free time in her galley. It was better than being hijacked in the back galley while Keegan continued crying about being single and Jesus hating him for craving a big fat dick rather than a deep dish vagina.
“I don’t know why I am single,” he’d say the moment we were alone in the galley, “why can’t I find a man who loves me and is a Christian?” His complaints and preaching were on a continuous loop from the last time I flew with him. I remembered it all too well. The four day trip where his friendship-if that’s what you call it-with Wendy came to a crashing hault. The shame he carried around for being gay was nauseating.
That’s the reason I spent so much time with Abigail in her galley. I wasn’t paid enough to listen to Keegan cry for hours about being single and Jesus not loving him twice in one lifetime. My time was too valuable. The first trip we worked together I swallowed down his shame like a shot of tequila, but I had learned my lesson now. He could save all that drama for someone who had never worked with him before. Let a stranger have all the fun.
While Abigail and I stood up in the front galley talking about how much we loved and missed our cats, the interphone rang. Of course it was Keegan. We looked at each other, and then at the interphone, waiting for the bravest person to pick up the call. Neither one of us flinched as the ding from the phone echoed through the airplane. A few tense seconds passed and Abigail still hadn’t reached for the interphone. Goddamnit. I buckled under the pressure and reached for the interphone. I’m so weak when it comes to my job, “This is Joe. What’s up?”
His squeaky voice reminded me of an Orca whale, "I think someone was smoking in the lav."
For a quick moment I forgot I actually disliked flying with Keegan. I had a new enemy and whoever that person was they were smoking on the airplane. When the words, “smoking in the lav,” finishing processing in my brain I didn’t even respond, I hung up on him. I sputtered out incomprehensible words towards Abigail’s direction and raced through the airplane as if it were already on fire. Flashbacks of my Atlanta outburst and unprofessionalism replayed in my mind. My emotions were faced with a difficult decision: act like a raging lunatic again or calm the fuck down and handle the situation like someone who’s been trained to handle emergencies on the airplane. I knew what I had to do. As I passed the last row and entered the galley I was in full control of my anger, which surprised me because I am never in control of my feelings.
Keegan leaned on the jumpseat with his hands against his head staring at me as I stepped into the galley. He lacked the amount of excitement I had regarding a passenger smoking on the flight. That was no surprise, a dried mop gave out more energy than Keegan. I placed my hands on my hips and simply asked, “Did you see who it was?
“It was 15F,” he answered, “I watched her walk out of the lav.”
“Did you look for the cigarette butt?”
“No.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“No.”
Fucking Keegan. When was I going to put him on my avoid to fly with list? Working the entire trip with a toddler seemed easier. My hopes of him learning valuable lessons on how to handle passenger situations from our last trip were squashed. It was obvious that he didn’t learn a fucking thing. Keegan was destined to always be a worthless flight attendant. He probably needed direction on how to take a shit and wipe his own ass. I’d stay far away from assisting in that, but if he did have a vagina-which I can’t confirm he didn’t-I’d suggest back to front just to make him suffer.
I opened the lavatory door and pulled out the garbage can to search for the cigarette butt. While I donned gloves and picked through the trash bin, Keegan stood there brain dead. I made a mental note to ask our recruiting department if our airline had a habit of hiring people who had undergone a lobotomy.
“Damn. It’s not in here.” I put the trash bin back under the sink and closed the lavatory door, “Do you want to go talk to her?”
“I don’t know what to say. I’m not good at this kind of stuff,” he said nervously chewing on his hangnails. How he had any left from our last trip I’ll never know.
“But you found it. It’s like finding a fire. Are you gonna walk away from a fire in the overhead bin because you don’t know how to use the fire extinguisher?”
“I’ve never dealt with a passenger who smoked on a flight.”
Jesus Henry Christ! This kid was a nightmare. “Follow me and learn something.”
The two of us walked up the aisle towards 15F. I looked back to make sure Keegan was trailing me because his body language screamed that he wanted to hide in the galley. But I refused to let him off the hook that easy. We stopped at row 15 and the female passenger in 15F had just finished covering herself up with a heavy black jacket and leaned her head against the window to take a nap. She wanted us to believe she had already fallen asleep but that shit wasn’t going to fly. Not today. I may not be ancient like some of the old hags I work with, but I also wasn’t born a week ago. I know a con when I see one. Smiling, I leaned in over the two other passengers in the row, put my hand on my chest, breathed deep through my teeth, and let out a long drawn out, "Hiiiiiiiiiii.” She immediately opened her eyes and acted confused like I had disturbed her sleep. I had zero patience for this shit, “Can you come to the back of the airplane with us?"
Without waiting for her to reply, I motioned for Keegan to follow me and we swiftly made our way to the back galley. Once there, we turned around to greet 15F as she made her way towards us but to our surprise she had caught up and was already standing between the two lavatories. She smelled like a jazz lounge and her face was more weathered than New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
I opened the lavatory door and pointed inside, "Did you use this lavatory?"
With a Scandinav
ian accent she answered, "Yes."
Truly unexpected. I expected to go straight for the jugular after hearing her lies but she told the truth. When I expect someone to lie and they come out with the truth it’s hard for me to recover. I looked at Keegan who continued snacking on his hang nails like they were string cheese.
"Did you smoke in the lavatory?"
With a deadpan expression, "Yes.” She looked over at Keegan and added, “I only took two puffs."
Surprised by her honestly, I almost gave her a free pass. Would it have been so terrible for me to tap her lightly on the hands and send her back to her seat? Without an extra Diet Coke, of course. Was that something that I could live with? Letting a smoker off scot-free? Fuck no! What in gay hell was I thinking? I prepared to unleash my verbal beat down but paused for a moment before I spoke. Handling this incident differently than the last time was important to me.
Apparently, it wasn’t that important. It should come as no shock that I lost my cool the moment I opened my lips. I came at her like a pimp collecting his money, "You endangered all of our lives on this airplane because you couldn't wait another two hours to have a cigarette.” At first she didn’t respond. She just stared at me the way Irene did the night I caught her pissing in her dresser drawer after drinking a case of Budweiser and taking too many hits off her bong.
"I only took two puffs," 15F stated in a very calm and quiet voice. She looked to Keegan for reassurance but he didn’t offer any. The only thing he had to offer anyone was a pile of chewed up dead skin.
I actually felt bad for her but I stood my ground, "I understand that, but you can’t smoke on an airplane. I don't care how many puffs you took. Two puffs. Twenty puffs. This is a no puff zone! Where is the cigarette butt?"
She looked back towards her seat, "I put it out. It is in my bag."
While she watched, I opened the lavatory door one more time, pulled out the trash bin, and started pushing soiled tissues around making it look like I was checking for fire embers. She needed to know this was some serious shit and I wasn’t just talking to her because I was bored on a long ass flight.
When I felt confident she understood the seriousness of smoking on an airplane, I placed the trash bin back into the lavatory and Keegan walked her back to 15F to confirm that she had the cigarette butt. I stayed surprisingly calm over the entire situation and felt empowered when I called the flight deck to tell the captain the situation. “This is Joe. 15F was smoking in the lavatory and she confessed to it. Can we have security meet the flight?”
“Did you find the cigarette butt?”
“Yes. She put it out and saved it for later.”
When we arrived at the gate she was greeted by the police. Who knows what happened to her but, hopefully, she was fined $10,000 by the FAA or deported back to Stockholm to spend the rest of her life in prison trying to keep her tits out of another woman’s mouth. The interesting part about this lady was her composure during the entire interaction. Most passengers become agitated by simply asking them how they take their coffee, but 15F didn’t even flinch after being accused of smoking in the lavatory.
I’m guessing this wasn’t her first time lighting up at 38,000 feet.
Airlines in the United States banned smoking on airplanes in 1998, but some passengers still think nothing will happen to them if they decide to light up in the lavatory. Perhaps they believe the little cigarette light with the line across it is for the person sitting in the other seat. We tell passengers that all flights are non-smoking, and even have signs all over the airplane, but passengers still ignore us. How can we get passengers to follow the rules? We can’t. We can only report them to security if we catch them smoking. My job would rock if flight attendants had the authority to carry around a can of pepper spray. A few squirts of pepper spray to the eyes, handcuff their hands behind their back, and-just for being stupid and endangering the lives of everyone on the airplane-a quick taser to the genitals.
Well, maybe that's going too far.
No Hustler For You!
Managing unstable passengers keeps me on the edge of my jumpseat more than running out of alcohol on a Las Vegas flight. Taking a job working inside an airtight metal tube full of strangers with nowhere to escape should make every flight attendant question their sanity. In the event a schizophrenic passenger forgets to take their medicine, the most we can do is hide in the lavatory, which can actually be unlocked from the outside. On most flights, I sit on my jumpseat looking out over the sea of passengers wondering who is going to lose their shit before we land. Who’s a pedophile? Who’s cheating? Who likes fisting? Who swallowed an eight ball before leaving for the airport and will barricade themselves in the lavatory trying to fish it out of the toilet? It doesn’t matter because once the airplane has departed, a flight attendant who comes in contact with a crazy passenger is held hostage by their insanity.
The key to squashing these outbursts at cruising altitude is to be observant. Watch passengers like a hawk watches a bunny scurry across an open field. Catch the fuckers before the airplane door closes. That’s the pivotal point in securing a drama free flight. Catch them fuckers first.
On a flight from Cleveland to Dallas I was working with Abigail and Keegan. Again! When I saw their names on my pairing I assumed they were buddy bidding with me without my consent. Not cool. Buddy bidding is when one flight attendant requests to fly trips with another flight attendant. Abigail I didn’t mind so much, but I had reached my breaking point with Keegan. An important factor in buddy bidding is that the requesting flight attendant be junior to their bidding partner because senior flight attendants’ schedules are created first. If a junior flight attendant requests to fly a trip with me and there happens to be an open position, they will get to experience my awesomeness. Sounds great, right? It is if you enjoy working with the requesting flight attendant. If you don’t then you are stuck with both insane passengers and a crazed flight attendant who thinks the worst thing about his life is that Jesus hates him for butt sex.
My first task after we finished this pairing was to file a complaint with the human resource department and ask for a full investigation on why the hell I was being awarded so many trips with these two. It was getting to the point where I could write a book on Abigail and Keegan titled Abigail Laughs and Keegan Cries About Religion and Cock.
The three of us were starting our first of three flights for the day. I am not a lazy complainer but working three flights in one day can be exhausting. Mind melting. I enjoy taking it easy. I am more of a one, or maximum two-flights-a-day kind of flight attendant. If my job is to stay fresh, polite, and happy while serving ungrateful passengers bags of nuts, then the least the airline can do is not work me to death. Especially if they want the passengers to come back. Is that too much to ask? On this trip I was the senior flight attendant and I was awarded the back galley position. As the lead flight attendant, Abigail (thankfully it wasn’t Keegan) worked in the front, and self-hating Keegan was holding down the mid-cabin position.
During boarding, a scruffy, mangy-looking twenty-something young man walked on the airplane. I watched him shuffle down the aisle and take his seat in row 19. From 15 feet away it was obvious this guy had yet to meet a bar of soap that he liked. Once all the passengers had boarded, Abigail made her pre-departure announcement that the airplane door was closing momentarily. That was my signal to do a final cabin safety check in my section. I straightened my tie in the lavatory mirror and slowly walked the aisle with my hands tucked behind my back, ensuring everyone had their cell phones and electronics turned off, bags carefully placed under the seat in front of them, and seat belts fastened.
I strolled passed the dirty slimeball in 19D and stopped in my tracks after noticing he had ripped the cover off a Hustler magazine and somehow attached it to the seatback so it covered his television screen. I paused for a moment. I took a step back, confirmed it actually was the cover of a porno magazine, leaned into his personal space, and pointed at the magazine co
ver, "Sir, I need you to take that down for me."
Looking up he asked, “Why?”
His dirty pores and unbrushed teeth were mere inches from the front cover of a Hustler magazine and he had the audacity to question me. I snapped like a turtle and leaned my weight on the back of his seat, "This is inappropriate material and some of our other passengers may become offended. Please take it down."
"Why?” He looked me directly in the eyes, “I bought this magazine in the airport. There’s nothing showing on the cover."
That was a true statement. There was no sign of nipples, ass, or bush; the only lips on the front cover were smeared with red lipstick and plastered across the slutty model’s face.
"I understand, but I need you to put it away,” I replied while I continued standing over him trying not to speak loudly. It was my duty to get the message across, but I didn’t want to embarrass this douchebag in front of other passengers. Why I wanted to protect him from humiliation was beyond me. I figured that was how to handle the situation even though his deliberate defiance was starting to work my last nerve.
We stared at each other for a few seconds and then he turned his head toward the lady sitting next to him, completely ignoring me, and mumbled something under his breath. I couldn’t make out what he said, but if I had to guess he probably wanted me to take a tree trunk, stuff it up my ass, and spin around on it. Who did he think I was? Keegan on a Reno layover?
Mr. Asshole was not playing nice. I hate when a passenger goes out of their way to make my day a living hell. I refused to say another word. I turned and walked up to the front of the airplane to give Abigail and Keegan a quick rundown on the situation. I also figured that by stepping away for a few minutes he might do the right thing and remove the porno cover.