I was on my second glass of chilled champagne. Mozart was soothing me through the earphones. Rio de Janeiro was many, many hours away. The British Airways flight attendant with the retrousse nose and the home-counties accent gently laid down the small table-cloth in a diamond shape and started to set out the caviar and prawn hors d’oeuvre in a lustrous china dish.
That’s when it happened. I moved to gently ease my table nearer to me, slightly moving the cloth as I did. She leaned over, took my hand and SMACKED it! “Naughty boy! It’s meant to be a diamond shape, don’t alter it.” Naughty boy? I was 44 years old. She smacked my hand? A complete stranger supposed to be serving me in the 747 British Airways Club Class cabin, for which I’d paid about six grand return, just smacked me like I’d been caught stealing a jelly baby. I’ve heard of these weird vice dens where grown men like to be treated like erring schoolboys, but I never thought I’d see such behaviour replicated 35,000ft in the sky.
I was so shell-shocked that I didn’t even complain. It was only later I confessed to myself that, like a lot of travellers, following such bruising encounters with female flight attendants I’d become scared stiff of them. Maybe it’s the uniforms, the hats, the crisp white blouses, all summoning up the starched, flare-nostriled spectre of the primary school head-mistress whose every word was law? It seems there’s a whole race of airborne harridans out there that take a delight in humiliating men. It’s almost jobsworth in its psychology: “Just because you’ve paid a small fortune for this seat means nothing you grotty little man. This is MY plane and I tell you what you can and can’t do.”
I once wandered out of Upper Class on Virgin to stretch my legs on a New York flight. I thought I’d do one lap of the plane; Deep Vein Thrombosis protection and all that. I encountered the food trolley doling out the usual junk to the poor sods in Economy. The dyed-blonde flight attendant with the estuarial accent turned on me: “Didn’t you ‘ear the annahncment? You’re not s’posed ta git up durin’ food service.”
I told her politely I was in Upper Class, and was just stretching my legs. Upper Class? The two words brought out all the latent snobbery in her. Oh, I wasn’t one of the plebs? She gulped. Her face went through this awful transformation from snarling chav to polished passenger charmer and she wheedled like Dickens’ Mr Quilp: “Oh, aym sorry. Hay ‘adn’t realised. Let me move the trolley for you…”
A colleague of mine was so infuriated by the rudeness of one of Croatian Airlines staff that the flight ended in a bizarre slanging match of insincere salutations: “Have a nice day!” “No, YOU have a nice day.” “No, YOU have a nice day.”
Thank God it was only Zagreb-London or we could have been in the Guinness Book of Records for the number of venomous compliments ever delivered at 625mph. My bladder bursting I once had to side-step a Laker Skytrain stewardess standing like a rugby full-back in front of the bathroom. They’d left the seat belt sign on for three hours on a run between LA and London, and were physically blocking people from going to the toilets. In these security-sensitive times I’d have been arrested on landing.
Why are they like this? Because they hate the job. It’s not glamorous. Short-haul you’re a waitress on her feet all day in a crowded, pressurised cafeteria. Long haul – you get to spend two nights in New York but have permanent jet-lag that causes premature aging. Sometimes the bitterness spills out; I once boarded a Delta Airlines flight Los Angeles-Honolulu, with my then baby daughter and her mother. We had problems getting the baby seat belt fastened. The plane started to taxi. The flight attendant shouted at us to sit down. We told her we couldn’t get our daughter secured safely. “I have been up since 4am sir,” she screamed at me, “and frankly I don’t care if your baby is secured safely or not. JUST SIT DOWN!”
I’m Mandy – miserable, stressed, angry and authoritarian. Fly me!
To contact Stuart White please email stuartwhite383@btinternet.com
