the walk of shame

I’ve spent four days at home, have done so little, but achieved so much. I am refreshed and looking forward to spending Christmas with my family after my next trip, which is another trip to Singapore. This trip’s a short one, and I get back by Christmas Eve.

I call shorter trips like this one as ‘wheelie-bag’ trips because I can fit all my clothes into just one in-cabin bag. I usually do so much shopping that I regret not taking my suitcase and end up cramming everything into my wheelie-bag, having to then carry extra shopping bags anyway.

Not this next trip.

I have done enough shopping in the last month to satisfy the average woman’s shopping fantasies for a year. This time in Singapore, I intend to sit by the pool and take relaxing to whole new level.

I pack my wheelie-bag, which takes all of about a minute, and drive to work. I actually feel safer on a plane than I do in a car, but that’s probably because I am not a very good driver.

Every time I go to dinner parties someone wants to talk about their flight from hell and how they thought they were going to die. You can put a dozen flight attendants, with over hundred years of collective flying experience between them, in a room, and you would be lucky if you can get one story about an alarming or life-threatening flight they had been on. The reality is that air travel is very safe.

An aircraft has back-up system after back-up system for its engines. I have been on two flights where we have lost an engine. On one occasion just after take-off – there was a loud bang, and then came the flames. The jumbo 747 made an emergency landing. There were fire engines and emergency personnel everywhere, and my emergency training kicked in effortlessly. However, although my heart was pounding and my throat went dry with anxiousness, the reality is that the plane did not behave any differently with one of its engines malfunctioning.

For all the derision that cabin crew aim at the pilots (and we do), we are aware that their responses in those emergency situations save the day. And that’s why pilots are so respected and why they get paid the big bucks.

Many friends have asked me if I ever think of the possibility of crashing. ‘No’ is my sure answer. I never consciously think about crashes, but I do have a morbid fascination for them. When I am away on trips I usually get ready for work with the TV playing in the background. My favourite channel is the Discovery, and nine times out of ten, the channel shows investigations of air crashes in great detail while I am getting ready for work. Thus, there I am, about to get onto an aircraft, and yet I can’t help but watch them show the flaming wreckage of a doomed flight that has slammed nose-first into the ground. Haunting images, yet I can’t look away. It is no wonder that when I take a little nap on the flight, I have the most distressing dreams about being in a plane in all sorts of trouble. However, I have never dreamt of a crash – but then again I have never slept long enough in the crew-rest area to finish a dream.

The crew-rest bunks are not exactly luxury-hotel beds. The bunks are small with paper-thin rubber mattresses as soft as concrete. All of this is located in the tail of the plane that is hurtling through the air at breakneck speed and with high-altitude winds swirling around. In the case of the slightest turbulence, our bunks shake like we are in the middle of road-construction works; passengers sitting in their cabins will feel only the slightest vibration, on the other hand. Some people are great at sleeping through all this. I am not, and this only makes this job so much tougher.

Ours is the only job I know where we can spend up to sixteen planned hours constantly facing and interacting with the general public. On occasions, I have done over twenty hours duty, thanks to delays or diversions.

Helen is a school teacher, albeit part-time now. I once asked her, ‘Can you imagine teaching the same classroom of children at one go for over 20 hours, and you get only one break to freshen up?’

She couldn’t, she said. I don’t think anyone could, I said.

The hardest thing about the crew-rest bunks is the ‘walk of shame’ once you have finished with your nap, or at least trying to close your eyes. Often, when you enter the cabin, after being asleep in a dark and shaky environment whilst dreaming of plane disasters, you find that the lights are on. Everyone in the cabin is awake and awaiting the next meal service. Also, a queue has lined up outside the toilets, which just happen to be right next to the crew-rest area you’re stepping out from.

Not only can you not use the busy toilets, but you need to walk through the cabin with hundreds of eyes staring into you. Make-up is usually smeared all over your face, and your hair looks like that of the lead singer from the band, The Cure. You put your head down and walk as fast as you can toward the toilets at the front of the aircraft, only to be greeted by another queue there.

I have done the walk of shame so many times, and I still haven’t gotten used to it.

I see that I am well ahead of time for the Singapore flight. I park my car and join my crew for the pre-flight briefing. This is the time I get to meet the crew, to renew acquaintances as well as meet new people. This is also the time when I can find out whether I can look forward to having a good trip ahead of me.

The crew is very senior; in fact, I realise that I am the most junior one there. It is no wonder the crew are so senior – we have a seniority-driven bidding system for our rosters, and everyone wants to do this trip. It is, also, no wonder that I made this trip my priority bid. This is the trip that will get us home for Christmas, so everyone wants to do it. Another incentive is that this flight mainly involves daylight flying, and we get home Christmas Eve with minimal jetlag to contend with. Not only did I get the dream roster of having Christmas off, but also get to spend New Year’s Eve in New York – my next trip is to the Big Apple. I like my job most of the time, but right now I love it!

The great thing about working with a senior crew is that everything onboard runs like clockwork. They deal with problems swiftly and effectively. They may sometimes be a little curt with passengers, but then if something does go wrong, they will save the day. Junior crews are enthusiastic, but are often a nightmare to work with.

It is not just the lack of experience that’s the problem with the junior flyers. Working with the Y generation brings a lot more problems to the trouble. They are probably called the Y generation because they are always asking ‘why?’, also usually followed by ‘how?’, ‘what?’ and ‘where?’.

Senior crew ask very few questions, and get their job done quickly. Also, they are a whole lot of fun. Several of the older men I work with – some even old enough to be my father – are incredibly young at mind and at heart.

As one of the guys on this crew, who is actually older than my dad, jokes, ‘I am only twenty-two. I’ve just had an extra thirty-five years of experience.’

They can be a little flirtatious and naughty at times, I am not offended the least; in fact I enjoy the attention. It becomes obvious that these guys are not used to working with anyone under fifty, and it is also obvious that they are just having fun. These men are experienced enough to know how far they can go.

The only trouble with crew that have been flying thirty-plus years is that their patience with passengers is getting as thin as their hair. I understand their frustration. After years of dealing with the public in the confines of an aircraft, it only seems like all the good passengers (who are the majority) have faded into the background and all they care to see is the annoying minority. After all, these minorities do take up the majority of a flight attendant’s time.

This flight goes effortlessly and without incident.

Am I on the dream trip that every hostie dreams about? I pinch myself.

We get M.T.O, which stands for Maximum Time Off. On this job, we use thousands of such acronyms. If a non-flyer were to hear us hosties having a conversation, he wouldn’t know what the hell we are talking about. Most of the emergency equipment is also referred to in acronym form; even I don’t know what some of them stand for. B.C.F, for instance. I never bothered to check what it meant. All I know is that if there is a fire, I point the B.C.F. at the fire and squeeze the trigger, and the fire will be put out.

With my M.T.O, instead of reading a book like I had wanted to, I end up listening to two older guys and their wonderful stories from the G.O.D (Good Old Days). These guys were pretty outrageous in their time. I am surprised at how frank they are and even more surprised at how proud they are of their antics. Even so, I am fascinated.

They talk about the days when the early jumbos had a lower-lobe, a galley area in the cargo hold that was accessed from inside the cabin. They tell stories of sitting down there with each other, smoking and drinking, even before take-off. They even talk about how they used to take girls down there. The details of what they did with the girls down there, I don’t want to get into.

Mary should have been born in their era, I think.

Then, I think that I should have been born in their era as well, for they tell me about trips to warm, exotic lands that lasted for almost a month. Six days in Athens, four days in Mauritius and so on, they brag, and I fume.

‘It was like one big around-the-world party,’ they laugh. And when they eventually did get back home, they got as much time off as they had just been away.

‘So if you did a twenty-one-day trip, you would get twenty-one days off?’

‘At least. Those were the union rules back then.’

These days, once I get back from a week-long trip, I’d be lucky if I get enough time after to wash my hair and let it dry before I have to pack and head off to work again.

As much as I love listening to the good old days, I am somewhat envious of these old-timers. I also assume that these boys have used a little creative license in their stories. Even so, it is all highly entertaining, and the time onboard passes quickly.

I get to the hotel feeling more alive than I have felt for a long time. I even have a glass of wine with the boys before calling it quits. Then, I head to my room to have a night of deep and blissful sleep – something I haven’t done for ages now.