by Joe Thomas
Something was terribly off about this information. I knew for a fact there were enough open seats on the flight. I triple checked before we left the states. I’ll admit that was a week prior but how many fucking people need to purchase last minute tickets from Helsinki to JFK? She had to be lying. I convinced myself of it while we faced off at the gate. I also convinced myself that Olga was nothing but a dirty Hitler-loving Nazi who wanted nothing more than to slap a pink triangle on my forehead and send me to the wood-burning ovens to make pizzas for her and her other Nazi airport friends. How did this bitch escape the Nuremberg Trials? That’s what I wanted to know.
“What should we do?” I desperately tried making eye contact with her but she was obviously done addressing me, “This is the only flight back to the states.”
She continued tapping away at her Nazi computer, “Wait until we call your name.” Before I could respond she turned and walked down the jet bridge closing the door behind her.
Defeated, I stepped away from the counter and made my way over to Evan who was perched on his rollerboard eating almonds one at a time as cool as a cucumber; a cucumber that I wanted to slam up Olga’s swastika.
“Look at the sexy guy over there,” he pointed with an almond between his fingers, “I’d have him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I wonder if he needs a husband?”
“I can’t believe we might not make it on this flight. Can this fucking trip get any worse?” I paced in front of him like a caged zoo animal, “What the fuck are we going to do? I don’t want to get stuck here tonight. What are we—”
“Chill out, queen.” he interrupted looking away from his future ex-husband, “You do this every time we travel. Maybe if we get stuck here we can find those two Russian guys who wanted to take us back to their hotel last night. They were cute.”
“They wanted to cut us up and dispose of our bodies.”
“You are so negative,” he stood up from his suitcase and wiping crumbs off his dress pants, “I’m going to the restroom. Watch my stuff.”
“I’m just freaking out.”
“I know girl, you always freak out. If you keep sweating and pacing like that, acting all crazy around the counter, they ain’t never gonna let us on this A340. They’re gonna think you converted over to Al-Qaeda.”
He was right; with my wide eyes and sweaty neck, I looked crazier than Ted Cruz caught on camera at a gay pride parade. While he went to the restroom I leaned my suitcase against the wall, sat down, and counted to ten. One. Two. Three… When that didn’t work, I started over again. After seven goes at that I could have simply counted to 70 the first time around.
When Evan sauntered back to me sitting on my suitcase he carefully looked me over making sure I wasn’t about to explode. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah. Just waiting for them to call our names.”
“They will. At least you’re not pacing in front of the counter. That’s a relief.” He looked around, “Where did my husband go?”
“He already boarded.”
“Oh. Maybe I’ll get to sit next to him on the flight.”
As Olga announced the standby passenger’s names who were granted passage onto the airplane, each time I didn’t hear her accented voice announce, “Evan or Joe,” my blood pressure went up a few points.
“Elisa Kivela,” 125/89
“Frans Lampo,” 144/94
“Jana Keto,” 165/113
Was she ever going to call our names? My faith wore thin as I watched her put down the intercom phone and step away from the podium. My heart sank. Actually, it almost quit functioning. If it were up to me, it would have stopped beating. Thankfully, my body knows how to survive better than I do. There were only a handful of people left scattered around the gate area. Though we were in a busy airport, it was eerily quiet within 20 feet of our gate.
Evan maintained his composure but I watched as he frowned the moment Olga stepped away from the counter. I assumed he thought that hint of disappointment escaped me but I saw it. I saw it loud and fucking clear. I stood up. Who sits in a heated situation like this? I needed to pace. I needed to move. I needed to fucking sweat. Who cares if the gate agents thought I had a bomb strapped to my chest. What good does it do me if I’m not on the airplane to detonate it?
While staring down at the floor, pacing behind Evan, I noticed someone walking towards us. It was Olga. Sweet amazing Olga. I instantly forgave her cuntish ways. If there had been a fish market in that airport I would have purchased her the biggest perch she could fit into her big Finnish mouth. Holding two pieces of paper in her hand, and without a word, she handed the last two boarding passes to us. The last two fucking seats. I had never been so happy in my entire life. My blood pressure went from near heart attack level to spa day level.
We thanked Olga but got no response in return. She simply walked back behind the counter and continued working at the computer. I didn’t care. She could have kicked me in the balls with her high heels and I’d still have bought her a fish. Olga was my Willie Wonka and she had presented us with two golden tickets. Tickets to escape a country that uses the words—haju häpy ja vittu—to express the terms “fuck you” and “smell cunt” interchangeably.
Grabbing the handle of my suitcase, I followed Evan down the jet bridge and onto the brand new A340. My happiness overpowered me and I refused to stop smiling. Who gave a fuck about a stolen iPhone? I was on my way home where a brand new cell phone waited for me at the store.
I took my aisle seat, fastened my seatbelt, and sighed so deeply the man sitting next to me looked over, “Happy to be going home?”
“You bet your ass I am.”
With Love From Mother Russia
Flight attendants generally refrain from waking sleeping passengers while conducting beverage and food service. It's rude. It's inappropriate. It's downright mean. But sometimes shit happens. Have you ever tried pushing a cart down a narrow aisle while passengers bulge out of their seats? It’s nearly impossible. If I do happen to accidentally wake a passenger while they're trying to catch a short nap on the flight I usually brace for impact. Once these sleepyheads are fully awake they tend to viciously attack. It takes all my energy not to throw a cup of ice in their lap to chill them the fuck out. Nobody wants their face chewed off when asking a stranger how they take their coffee.
During my early years as a flight attendant, I cared little about who I disturbed on the flight. It meant nothing for me to randomly wake up sleeping passengers simply out of boredom. My mentality was if I can’t sleep, neither can you. Total bitch move, right? I frequently bumped into passenger’s legs or kicked their feet, especially if their legs protruded into the aisle. The first time I tripped over a passenger’s shoes and landed in an empty aisle seat, I started stomping my way down the aisle instead of shuffling my feet. Shuffling your feet only works for people wading around in the ocean attempting to avoid a stingray, not on an airplane. When I work a red-eye flight and a passenger has their size 13 shoe in the aisle, their ass gets stomped on. Flight attendants can’t risk injury because passengers are too cheap to pay for a business class seat to stretch out their long ass legs.
It’s not all bad. Flying during the day seems to be easier for passengers when it comes to keeping their feet and legs where they belong, which is out of the aisle. Nighttime flying brings out the selfishness in most passengers, which makes no sense because they usually paid less for their tickets. If I’ve learned anything about the airline industry, it’s that people who paid the least amount for their tickets expect the most—which includes not only their seating area but the aisle adjacent to them. That’s why I tend to avoid working in the back of the airplane where the poor people congregate. You know who I’m talking about. The redneck dude who’s normally sneaking a cigarette on a Greyhound bus lavatory. He gets his cousin to buy him a ticket on your flight from Wichita to New Orleans and you spend two hours tripping over his feet because he thinks he owns the entire fucking airplane.
That’s why
I simply wake the fuckers up, “Oh I’m sorry, sir,” crushing their dirty feet under my work shoes, “you might want to put your bare feet back under the seat in front of you before you lose a toe.”
As fun as that sounds—and believe me when I say it was—I stopped that practice long ago, but not for reasons you’d expect. It had nothing to do with being nice and not finding joy in crushing the bare feet of inconsiderate assholes. That made flying red-eyes entertaining. It’s that an awake passenger is a passenger who will constantly ask for something. People who sleep don’t ask for shit because they are asleep. Ever wonder why your flight attendants ask you to close the window shade when you are about to fly cross country on a red-eye flight? It’s purely for selfish reasons. If the shade is closed you will sleep throughout the flight and not wake up asking for juice when the sun rises over the East Coast. It took me a few months to figure out that if I tip-toed through the airplane like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, the passengers would sleep until the airplane touched down in our final destination.
Now when I wake up a passenger it’s for a damn good reason, like reminding them to fasten their seat belt, asking them for their phone number, or if they are male—which they always are—offer them a first class blow job to relieve the midnight pressure building up between their legs. I’m serious, this is no laughing matter. As the flight attendant it is my job—scratch that, my duty—to check for explosive devices and I hate to say it but the guy in 4C looks like he’s ready to blow. In all honestly. I’ve never sucked a dick on the airplane. What do you think I am, a whore? Don’t answer that. Even though a piece of man flesh has never touched my lips on the airplane I still like to put the offer out there on the tray table. Right next to their bag of salty nuts.
The tricky part about beverage service is knowing exactly who wants to be woken up and who doesn’t. Some do. Some don’t. How the fuck am I supposed to know the difference? It’s like playing airline Russian roulette with thirsty people and their combative emotions. There has to be an easy way around this dilemma.
Wait a minute… I think I’ve got it. An excellent idea just entered my mind as I typed away at my laptop. I hope nobody else has thought of it or I will feel pretty fucking stupid. What if the airlines attached a perforated coupon to a passenger’s ticket? Hear me out before you abandon the idea. One side could read—WAKE ME—and the other side could say—DON’T FUCKING BOTHER ME. Or something like that. You get where I am going with this. Before the airplane takes off, the passenger rips off the coupon and attaches it to their seat. Where they attach it on the seat I have no idea. Like I said, this idea just came to me and I haven’t thought it all the way through yet. Just bear with me. When the flight attendants come around for service, they read the side of the card that’s facing up and know exactly what type of service the passenger expects. Crafty thinking, right? You’re welcome. I’ve probably just changed the entire airline industry while writing this book and sitting on the sofa in my underwear.
I doubt my brilliant idea will ever be implemented. For one, most airlines keep passengers’ tickets after they are scanned at the gate. And two, as simple as my resolution sounds, people would still fuck it up. Part of being an airline passenger is not knowing how to do the simplest tasks on the airplane.
But have no fear, I believe I have the answers. Whether you fall asleep or not, ordering a beverage should not be the hardest part of your travel experience. It should be the easiest. To assist with this, I have created a few quick tips to help anyone when they order a beverage on a flight. No matter your travel background, once you incorporate these into your travel toolbox your entire life will change. Mark my words. And you thought all flight attendants were bitches.
1. Stay awake so the flight attendant can take your drink order. Sounds easy, but probably the hardest thing for an airline passenger. There’s nothing worse than walking passed a sleeping passenger only to get verbally abused later because you skipped over them.
2. Stay awake after you place your order so you can receive your drink. Some flight attendants will simply walk the drink back to the galley if you are sleeping and you’ll never even know they attempted giving it to you. You’ll believe they completely forgot about you. After you wake up you’ll ring your call bell and act all bitchy when it’s you who fucked up in the first place by falling asleep.
3. Put your tray table down so that if you do manage to stay awake to give your order, but then pass out before it’s delivered, the flight attendant can place your drink on the tray table and it will be there for you to enjoy when you wake up. Sure, it will be watered down and taste like nothing, but at least you were served.
4. Read your menu card. If you can read this book, you can read the selection of drinks on your flight.
5. Take out your earbuds or headphones when the cart arrives at your row. When you see the flight attendant with the beverage cart, you know what time it is. It’s service time. So why play deaf, dumb, and blind forcing them to ask you three times what you’d like to drink? It’s like you’ve never seen an airline cart before… Oh!?! What’s this? A boxy metal contraption? I wonder what’s inside, hookers?
6. Order for your children. Period. The flight attendant has 48 other passengers to serve while you sit there wasting time convincing your toddler to order apple juice instead of Sprite.
7. When it comes to ice for your drink, let us know what you want. With ice? Without ice? Two cubes? A half a cube? I don’t give a fuck but I’m not a mind reader. Just tell me so I don’t pour you a Diet Coke and then have you sneer up and say, “I didn’t want ice.”
8. Listen when the flight attendant talks to you. It’s called mindfulness and makes dealing with other human beings much easier. If the flight attendant asks you, “May I get you something to drink?” Try not responding with, “Do you have a spoon?” The last time I checked there was no spoon service on the flight. Pay attention!
9. Ask for the entire can. Some airlines give the full can of soda automatically but some airlines do not. You only get a cup, usually a cup filled to the brim with ice and only two sips of soft drink. If you know you are going to be thirsty five seconds later, ask for the full can. Your flight attendant doesn’t care, but what we do hate is when you suck that sugar water down in one sip and start demanding more before I’ve even handed out drinks to the last row.
10. Alcohol is not served on every flight. Some flights are too short to serve alcohol. If it takes you longer to check the mail than it does to get to your destination on your flight, there’s a good chance they don’t serve alcohol. Ask the flight attendant when you board the airplane. If they won’t be offering alcohol on the flight, don’t be a dick about it. If they do offer alcohol, still don’t be a dick.
That helpful list might have come in handy on one particular flight from Los Angeles to Miami. After completing my beverage service, I made my way down the aisle collecting trash like I always did. You can never go through the airplane enough times collecting trash. It seems like passengers bring their trash from home just to throw it away on the airplane.
“Hi. Do you have any trash?”
“Oh yes, here,” handing over a plastic cup, some coffee grounds in a plastic baggie, and four egg shells.
“Egg shells? Why do you have eggshells and coffee grounds?”
“Trash pick up is on Thursdays at my house. Figured this was easier.”
At least it feels that ridiculous. As I walked through the airplane picking up plastic cups one right after another, a passenger standing behind me aggressively tapped me on the shoulder. I instantly felt hot breath on my neck. My first thought was, “Dad? Is that you?” but realized if it was indeed my father, the smell of Aqua Net and cigarettes would have given him away.
With my signature fake smile I turned cheerfully asking, "May I help you?"
I stood face to face with the guy in 14C. In a rough, disturbingly loud Russian accent he yelled while pointing at my face incensed, "You! You didn't wake me to ask me what I
wanted to drink. Why did you not wake me?" He sprayed me with enough saliva to keep me hydrated for a few weeks—helpful if I found myself stranded in Death Valley—not flying in a controlled environment at 40,000 feet. I don’t want to sound prudish but I refuse having another man’s spit all over me while I’m on the airplane unless I’m on my knees in the flight deck. Sorry, but I have standards and they don’t include drunk passengers. Working pilots, yes. Drunk passengers, no. When the Russian asshole opened his mouth and flashed his yellow stained teeth I immediately smelled the gritty streets of Moscow on his breath.
14C was what I’d assumed to be a typical, middle aged Russian male. He could have easily been cast as the lead villain in a James Bond movie flying a helicopter over an erupting volcano while pushing his henchmen out one at a time to their fiery deaths; or something dramatic like that. He had the look nailed to the point that I quietly questioned if he had a team of stylists along with him. Flowing salt and pepper hair, thick gray beard, rosey red alcoholic cheeks, raspy vocal chords, and fingers thick enough to be cast into dildos for female midgets. Luckily for the rest of us, there were no little people with hungry vaginas on the flight.
I continued smiling while my patience wore thin. "Sir, I don't wake sleeping passengers. What can I bring you?"
"You wake me up! I need vodka. Vodka! Do you hear me?” We were flying over Phoenix and with the volume of his voice I assumed the entire city below heard him. “Beer! Anything. What do you have?" His anger and rudeness didn’t bother me as much as the dirty looks he projected my way. As if I personally destroyed Chernobyl. Sure, my farts smelled toxic but not even one of my chemical warfare fart bombs could take down an entire city—maybe cause a delay at the Moscow Airport—but not burn the skin off newborn babies. He must have known I farted at the front of the airplane before I started collecting trash. But how?
It didn’t matter. When I farted in the front galley I instantly knew the lady in 2C was keen on my mishap when she pinched her nose asking, “Do I smell something burning?