Heather Poole: Cruising Attitude

The warning bell immediately rang in my head. Whenever someone uses my name, it almost always means a special request is coming.

“I’m sorry, but there aren’t any open seats in first class available.” Just as I was about to tell her that even if there had been an open seat we still would not have been able to accommodate her up front, she waved me away with a flick of the wrist and continued down the aisle to a coach seat.

On a 767, the business-class galley is located behind business class in coach. Coach passengers seated on either side of it in the exit row are normally frequent fliers who didn’t qualify for an upgrade now hoping to score free handouts. So when the sick woman sat down right behind the exit row, I knew it wasn’t my lucky day.

She rang her call light thirty minutes into the flight. I turned around holding a linen-lined tray with four drinks balancing on top—Diet Coke with lime, water no ice, vodka tonic, chardonnay—and asked, “Can I get you something?”

“I don’t feel well. I’m nauseous.”

“Would you like a glass of ginger ale?”

“I’d prefer tea. Herbal tea. But not in a Styrofoam cup, a mug—a real mug,” she said, eyeing the oven-warmed business-class porcelain mugs lining the chrome counter.

“All we have is plain black Lipton tea.”

“Fine. Can I get something to eat?”

As my partner continued working his side (and only his side) of the business-class cabin, I called my coworkers in coach who were just about to pull the carts into the aisle to do the service to get a rundown of snacks that were available for purchase. When I hung up the phone, she said, “Do you have any uncooked vegetables?”

“Uncooked vegetables?” I repeated. I wanted to make sure I’d heard that right.

“That’s all I can eat.”

“How about a roll or cheese and crackers?” offered my colleague. As a rule, we never offer business-class food to coach passengers, but she did look a little pale and we didn’t want to divert the flight.

But this sick passenger couldn’t eat rolls. She couldn’t eat cheese. She couldn’t eat salad. She couldn’t eat nuts. She couldn’t even eat chocolate! Nor could she eat the delicious homemade combination fried rice the passenger sitting directly in front her kindly offered. (But I did and it was delicious! Thank you, Kwan.)

The only thing she could eat were uncooked veggies, and if she didn’t eat them now, as in right now , she would get violently ill—or so she said.

As soon as the flight attendants working in first class were done with their service, I went up to see if there were any leftovers available. There rarely ever are. Well, not only did I find a bowl of green peas sitting on the salad cart but the lead flight attendant actually allowed me to take the first-class peas to the princess in coach!

“It’s your lucky day,” I said, handing her the silver bowl along with a silver spoon.

Not a word was said. No thank-you. No nothing. Just two bites, an ugly face, and the bowl was handed back to me. The passenger seated beside her rolled his eyes.

No sooner did I turn my back than a call light rang. I didn’t have to walk far to turn it off.

“I need your help to get to the bathroom,” she mumbled.

Taking her elbow, I helped her to stand. As she got to her feet, she moaned, “I’m going to be violently ill.” Then she quickly took four steps to the business lav. I handed her a barf bag, shut the door, and told her I’d return to check on her in a minute.

“I’m not going to make it,” I barely heard her say from behind the locked door.

On the other side of the closed door, I yelled, “What do you mean you’re not going to make it? Do I need to page for a doctor?”

“No. I just need…” I leaned in closer and cupped my ears against the door. The OCCUPIED sign turned to VACANT and I almost fell inside. “Potatoes,” she mumbled. “Do you have any potatoes?”

“We have potato chips, but not potatoes.” With all ninety-nine pounds of her weight leaning into me, I helped her walk back to her seat. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of club soda and a roll? It might make you feel better.”

“I’m sure. Are you sure there aren’t any potatoes on board?”

The only thing I was more sure about were my passengers in business class. They had to be wondering where the heck I’d disappeared to again.

I shook my head. We had no potatoes. And that was when the “ill” passenger, the one who may or may not have thrown up in the bathroom (depending on who you asked), which may or may not have been the reason why the sink was now overflowing with what may or may not have been water, brown water, looked at me angrily and hissed, “I haven’t asked for much on this flight!”

Okay, it’s important to point out here—at least it’s important to me that I point out—that I’m really a nice person. I am. I love my job. I do. And I’ll do pretty much anything for the passengers, within reason, whether they’re sick or not. I will. Still, this passenger had gotten on my last nerve. But I kept my mouth shut and got down on one knee, the way we’re instructed to do in training, and looked her in her red eyes and listened as she not so very nicely said, “And I’ve been pretty nice on this flight, considering the circumstances.”

I inhaled deeply and nodded my head in agreement. It took all my strength not to remind her of all she had, in fact, asked for—a first-class seat, herbal tea, a business-class mug, uncooked vegetables, help to the bathroom, potatoes, and now this, to deplane first, that’s it and nothing more. In fact, she had asked me for more than any other passenger in fifteen years of flying!

To be fair, it’s not always the passengers who are crazy. Sometimes, it’s my colleagues. Years ago, I knew there might be a problem when four out of the nine flight attendants working my trip stopped me before I could even get my crew bags into the overhead bin to say, “You’ll be working the drink cart on the left-hand side of coach.”

“Okay,” I said, even though it was not okay. I’m not big on confrontation.

I’d been awarded this trip on reserve, which meant I didn’t know the crew. Not that that mattered. What mattered was they were based in San Francisco, one of the most senior bases in the system. I am New York–based, which is and has always been the most junior base in the system at my airline. It’s where most new hires end up. At some airlines, flight attendant positions on the plane are determined before each flight based on seniority. Just because a flight attendant works the galley position on one leg of the trip doesn’t mean they will automatically get to work the same position on the next leg of the trip. If a more senior flight attendant wants to trade positions, the junior flight attendant will do so. Not at my airline. We know where we’re working long before we leave the house for the airport, and we don’t have to trade if we don’t want to. Even so, the rest of the crew felt superior enough to tell me where, exactly, I’d be working that day, even though I already knew where to work, which was not the drink cart on the left-hand side of coach.

After I stowed my bags in the crew-designated area for my position, a bin in the middle of coach on the right hand side, I walked to the very back of the plane to introduce myself to three flight attendants hanging out in the galley. The crazy look in his piercing blue eyes immediately gave him away as the problem colleague. I smiled anyway.

“I think I’ll be working with you today. I’m Heather.”

“Mike.” Mike sat down on his jump seat. He crossed his legs and smoothed his thick black mustache, not once making eye contact. “I’ll be working the beverage cart alone, if you don’t mind.”