Welcome back to high school, sorry Cabin Crew:

One of the many problems that we have is that we know who is getting into the aircraft. We know if the person seated in 23H got his ticket with an employee benefit (non-revenue) or if the other one seated in 1B pay a full fare for his ticket or not. Through the manifest is almost impossible not to know the “standard” of the passenger. As the word describes it is a clear print of a public declaration of principles and statements so it has become an impossible thing to hide from.

When I go on holidays I use the airline benefits to get very good deals in the air fares and Hotels. Many times I only have to pay taxes and that is it. But the problem starts when I´m in the airport and I don´t want another Crew to know that I´m flying just for leisure simply because I tend to get the look of: “you are getting freedom while I´m trapped with India” and as I tend to believe in the good and bad flow of energy I don´t want to get stuck with that bad “juju” during my rest. So I always try to pretend that I am just another passenger in the aircraft and it´s a hard thing to do when you are programmed to interact in a certain way with your “natural” environment.

I do queues in the different counters just like everybody else but the only difference is that I try to hide my face with a very big book (usually Stephen King) while I hear some random music. The hardest thing to do in all of this is not to help a passenger in need when he is lost inside the Airport or when he doesn´t understand how the boarding procedure works.

I´ve noticed that the way in which we explain certain things to passengers it´s in a very “special” manner that is difficult to explain: usually we try to be very patient towards the customer trying to understand what he is trying to say even so he doesn´t speak English at all (we use hand gestures and try to make them feel that we are trying our best to understand what he is trying to communicate – but it´s not always like that). 

When I´m in the airport as a passenger and I see a lost couple of Chinese passengers staring at the humongous departure screen I just walk along as if they don´t exist (I´m not working) or when a Mexican couple is trying to understand how to convert the rate I just play the account in my head while I walk next to them as if I were to be totally deaf (sorry for the inconvenience holidays mode on).

Also, I may use for free the business class lounge but I don´t simply because I just don´t want to deal with the totally unnecessary competition if I would accidentally bump into another colleague. They may start with this lame competition of: “how much hours did you have last month?” Answer - and then the “Uhm, is that so” and then the ballistic statement and question: “I heard you broke up, yeah, I didn´t see you well in your last flight you looked almost old but now I see you better, are you dating?” Answer: “no” – Thought: I just broke up and I seriously want to break down your face against the floor for saying me that I look old, I think I only saw you twice and you are telling me that I looked like that! So yes, I try to evade certain popular places because it´s just like high school: the popular – the rich bitch – the Asian nerd and the looser.

Once boarding starts (hoping that accidentally the whole crew passed through my name in the manifest) I simply go to my seat, eat and sleep. If I have to “go” I try to go to the toilet that is located far away from the galley and only when cabin lights are dimmed. I simply want to avoid the unnecessary crew contact when she says: are you crew? – smile, even if I tell her “no” she will then check my confession in the manifest.

So not only I have to deal with the rumors (that they manifest everywhere) that much I don´t care about or hearing (but not listening) at the crew that is dating someone wealthy and needs to shout-out (I would really say shootout) what she exactly did last night (with every possible detail). Not only have I heard the constant lame regrets such as: “none of my relationships seem to work” while they are crying in the galley making a “heart braking statement” to a Purser – smile, while I hear that I say to myself: “honey, why did you chose a “career” at 35.000ft?” Just deal with it, there are phew healthy relationships in the industry and the most probable thing is that you´ll finish dating a pilot and if you´re lucky someone from Management.

It´s like I have constant déjà-vu´s about my high school but the only good thing is that this time it seems that I evolved from being a “looser” to a higher place in the hierarchy pyramid – Wahoo with pompons included flexing my legs up to the sky, not.

(I don´t own the above picture)