You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
The confessions of a flight attendant.
Coffee, tea or me has apparently degenerated into sex and drugs and drunken debauchery at 36,000 feet.
Heather Poole has been flying the friendly skies for 15 years.
This veteran flight attendant wrote down what she saw. Some of it is interesting. Some of it makes me say who cares.
Poole says flying at 30,000 feet is a pressure cooker.
Maybe yes. Maybe no. I guess if Al Quada pops out of his seat with a box cutter, you’ve got my attention.
But by and large, you push a cart down an aisle and you ask people if they want soda, juice or peanuts. That aint’ exactly brain surgery, Heather!
A pressure cooker?
Fighting fires in NYC, that’s a pressure cooker. Driving an ambulance in Beirut, that’s a pressure cooker. Re-inserting pins in hand grenades, that’s a pressure cooker.
You wait tables 6 miles in the sky? That’s just a cafe that flies at 500 miles an hour.
I mean come on, the cart rolls forward and backward. You don’t don’t even have to think about left or right. That should free up a lot of flight attendant brain activity for other difficult tasks like napkins, extra ice and reminding me how to fasten my seat belt.
Heather Poole was on Good Morning America recently trying to sell her book about being a flight attendant.
She talks about people getting naked, stealing food and putting a voodoo curse on other passengers.
It sounds like a walk through the French Quarter to me.
Poole says that flying in a tube crammed with passengers is crazy.
I wonder if the orderly in the psych ward shares your assessment of crazy?
I can see where once in a while people go nuts and flight attendants are at the eye of the storm, but that can happen to anyone, anywhere, in any job.
Courthouses, hospitals, bank tellers, school teachers. Crazy doesn’t always buy a ticket and fly to Las Vegas. Often times, crazy just shows up, angry and ready to fight and when it does you have to deal with it.
But flight attendants and high altitude angst is sexy. Since 911, a chronic cough captured on iphone video in an aircraft makes news.
Just today, the Jet Blue pilot having an anxiety attack is front page news. This is frightening and thank God passengers don’t sit back like silly putty anymore when threatened with an emergency.
If the pilot had gotten into the cockpit who knows. But the same can be said for almost any madmen off his meds. What if he is driving a train, a bus, has a gun in a crowded movie theater?
My point is, crazy often arrives without an invitation or an RSVP. But when crazy happens in the air, it is breaking news. Those images of the towers coming down are looming in the back of all our minds.
Here’s the good news people. 99 percent of all flights take off and land without incident. They are regular like grandpa after a big cup of morning coffee and a bowl of bran.
The biggest threat is whether my bag made the plane change in St. Louis.
After the first hour of any flight I’ve ever been on, The flight attendants are in the back of the plane talking amongst themselves. Most times we don’t have to wrestle the pilot or anyone else on board.
So 99 percent of the time, working in a plane doesn’t seem that laborious to me. I don’t know what kind of special training you need to carry a basket of peanut butter clusters and have people serve themselves.
This ain’t TWA in the 60’s miss Poole. It’s not like your serving Chateau Briand and a chilled bottle of champagne.
Poole talks about people revealing secrets to perfect strangers.
Divorce, affairs, bad bosses.
Lady have you ever sat at the bar at TGIF’s? People will run their mouth to anyone about anything.
To make the book seem sexier, she talks about blankets and pillows and purple lights.
The innuendo is that people have had sex under blankets in planes.
Newsflash Ms. Poole. People have sex in weird places.
Cookbook aisle at Barnes and Nobel?
Bathroom stall at the Olive Garden?
Port-a-john outside the coliseum.
I’m just saying.
Sex on a plane? The mile high club. I just don’t think it happens that often. Her book is a blatant attempt to sell books. Sex sells, so nasty DNA on airplane pillows will sell too?
I for one say, shut the hell up and be happy you have a damn job.
In this economy, people will shovel camel poop with their bare hands.
You make decent money, you fly for free, and people generally respect what you do.
Don’t sell me a book, give me more than 3 saltine crackers on my next flight across the country.
And that is crazy.™