There’s no respect flying domestic

(An excerpt from the book, Cruising Attitude - first draft…)

People with regular jobs aren’t quite as understanding when flight attendants complain about their lives.   Our bad days automatically sound good if we’re able to toss in words like Paris, Buenos Aires, Rome, and Madrid into random sentences on a regular basis.  Even if we don’t work to international destinations people automatically assume that we do.  Unfortunately the majority of flight attendants get stuck working to cities like Dallas, Dulles and Denver.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Dallas, Dulles, or Denver.  It’s just that when the video player goes on the fritz and we have to do a manual safety demonstration, it normally doesn’t include the bit on how to properly inflate a lifevest  since most US airports aren’t located over a body of water.    

Seniority is everything at an airline.  Those who have it take full advantage of it by flying international routes, making the rest of us suffer in their glamorous wake.  I don’t blame them.  One day I, too, hope to have enough years under my thin, blue, belt to work all the best trips and make junior flight attendants (and some passengers) cry by not retiring when they think I should.  Why retire when all I’ll have to do is work two five-day trips to Narita each month?  Gardening is nice, but so is eating sushi with real wasabi and shopping in the Ginza district!  Until then you’ll find me laying over in Saint Louis with nothing to do except browse the Hustler Store or go to Denny’s for the early bird, super bird, special.  Both establishments are located directly across the street from our airport layover hotel, which is also located right next to a cemetery that can double as a running path.  Such is life.              

Whenever I tell anyone where I’m going or where I’ve been, I immediately see the disappointment  in their eyes.  There’s no respect flying domestic!  It’s like comparing Wal-Mart to Barney’s. My friend Melanie can always tell an international flight attendant from a domestic one based on their shopping bag alone – Harrods vs Trader Joes - hanging off the back of their rollaboard.  No one wants to hear about my layover in Orange County when my roommate is talking about laying out on a beach with its own Barry Manilow song.  Hey, I get it, because I feel the same way about foreign based flight attendants.  Their lives can’t be all that much different from mine, yet they seem so much more exciting and glamorous even when at the end of the day they end up on the opposite side of the same hotel pool. 

Perhaps it’s the accent that makes the grass seem so much greener.   Maybe it’s the uniform.  Something tells me the Air France flight attendants aren’t wearing skirts made in China or pants made in Poland with blazers made in Guatemala, which explains why my navy blues don’t always match up and why I look like one of the Bad News Bears whenever I’m surrounded by my stylish foreign counterparts.  For awhile I wondered if the airline I work for wanted our uniform pieces designed by every country we flew to.  Or if the lavatory maintenance department had been given authority over uniform quality checks.  When I called the uniform department to complain about my mismatched blues, I was informed of what I already knew.  None of the new blazers matched any of the old uniform pieces.  Solution; order a new dress.  Yeah, easy for them to say considering they weren’t the ones stuck paying for a majority of the uniform pieces out of pocket.  The polyester tent dress alone costs ninety-nine bucks!  And that doesn’t include the cost for alterations.  Which is why I continue to wear the purple-y dress with the midnight blue blazer, and why I’m sure passengers think I’m color blind instead of broke.  The good news is I have nothing to do with the horrible fashion faux pas. If I look like crap it’s the company’s fault.  On my days off, well, unfortunately that’s my fault…..