First of all, to get to my blog in order to post new posts, I type "blogger.com" into my address bar. But sometimes, I accidentally type "blooger.com" instead and that makes me giggle.
But what I actually want to talk about is related to style, but more on a level of classiness. Yesterday I had the opportunity to fly with my favorite flight attendant again. His name is Tom and he lives in Palos Verdes, California, but he is based out of Minneapolis. He's VERY tan, goes in for LOTS of plastic surgery and is ALWAYS very neat & tidy. None of that makes him my favorite flight attendant though. He's my favorite flight attendant because he really enjoys his job. You know that little adage of "work like you don't need the money"? Well, Tom works as a flight attendant because it pays the property taxes on his very nice home in California. His actual career is that of an architectural renderer. But he loves flying. He loves the passengers. And because of that, he is an absolute doll to work with.
My industry is full of a lot of cranky people. And sometimes, they have good reason to be cranky. A lot of times, we have to get up early, work a long day, deal with awful rude customers, have just 9 hours for our layover and then get up to do it all over again. But a lot of these flight attendants are cranky All The Time. And they are the worst to work with. They are the ones who bitch about the aircraft, who bitch about the passengers, who bitch about the company. And the negativity just drains the energy right out of me. I'm certainly not perfect and I definitely bitch about things from time to time, but in the grand scheme of things? I love my job. But it's hard to love my job when I work with the cranky old bags. So it's like a breath of fresh air to work with someone like Tom.
And it makes me want to be the best little Flight Attendant Extraordinaire that I can be. And I don't care if it sounds cheesy. I'm passionate about good customer service. I feel like we live in a world where we have all become so self-centered that it's a lovely surprise when people say "please" and "thank you" to me as I'm serving them in the aisle. So I try my hardest to make my passengers feel welcome on my aircraft. And it's wonderful to work with someone else who feels the same.
On my flight to Miami in December, I wanted to punch the guy behind me. He kept talking about how they needed to retire "all these dinosaurs." I thought at first he was talking about the aircraft, because it was an older one that had welded shut ashtrays.
ReplyDeleteThen I realized he was talking about the flight attendants.
It was an older crew but they were AWESOME. They gave outstanding service and were cheerful. He was a total aging washed up rock start type so it didn't surprise me that he would just want eye candy on his flight, but it pissed me off so much.
Your job is a hard one and I totally appreciate what you do.