Flight: Hong Kong
Date: 2nd January
In every work place, there are natural enemies, most of the time it is not personal. I remember the day’s I used to work in marketing long time ago, where the marketers had constant conflicts with the accounts. It’s a similar struggle in the aviation industry operations; the ones who are on ground VS the ones on air. An airhostess works with different people every day in different aircrafts. It’s almost like going to work for the first time every time.
However for the ground staff it is not the case. There are few ground operations that love to make an airhostess’s life living hell. No 1 are the scheduling officers, who are in charge of rosters. Even after completing a dreaded standby month with no control over where you would fly to, having a confirmed monthly roster is an airhostess’s dream come true.
Yet due to many operational reasons, they do get swapped around despite, what plans they may have. And the scheduling officers love to mess with the rosters. Sometimes they won’t give any reason for why that precious day off with the family was flushed away suddenly and pushed in to a 5 day long haul.
Also it is another nightmare when they assign a duty out of the grade. After long days of hard work, once achieve first class crew status, an airhostess would hardly want to go serve chicken or beef back in economy. Many crews have their own tales of agony to share, when it comes to scheduling department. Some of the mean responses they got even included “You are going on a paid vacation, what’s your problem?”
That’s what many ground staff think of the aircrew-“oh how nice, a paid vacation and I am stuck here at work!” Apart from that the ground staff also thinks that airhostess’s are a bunch of dim-witted weirdo’s who makes weird requests; “can you please help this lady with her bags? She’s carrying 2 babies?” once asked this most of them would pout and walk away saying “NO WE ARN’T ALLOWED TO CARRY BAGGAGE!”
This is certainly true according to their rules and regulations, and it is practical as they deal with thousands of people, if they would have to carry thousands of bags for people who need assistance, the company would end up paying a thump of medical claims for backaches. That’s why many airports around the world have porter services available.
I once had a ground staff “colleague”, who used to say that she used to make hundreds of people wait if they won’t come on a proper queue, and would make them run to the airplane the last minute. How rude I thought, but looking at the trials they face with so many passengers transiting hourly through the airport I even started thinking, an airhostess certainly has more perks.
So it was no doubt that airport ground staff would sometimes try to pass some of that anxiety on to the airhostess’s in the form of a dunked passenger, scattered seating for a family travelling together, allowing heavy baggage to be carried on, or even telling the passengers “Oh don’t worry your airhostess will take care of that!” to something, that was impossible. One thing to remember is that every profession there are a few rotten tomatoes, and that doesn’t mean the whole bunch is bad.
I had the privilege of flying with a former member of ground staff, and I remembered her pouty face very well, as she refused my leave request due to a family emergency to send me on a turnaround flight; made me delayed immensely for my grandmother’s funeral and for once I couldn’t give 200% to my work that I love.
She of course didn’t remember me, and looked pretty exhausted working in economy. When I offered to assist, she gave the same old pout and said “Oh look, a first class crew coming to help? Did you become tired of sitting down lazy?” Unfortunately, she has carried her attitude all the way up above and I started to regret, why didn’t I complain to management about a person with such an attitude, and then realised after all I am not her.
After sitting down in the galley for a minute, she would blabber away to the other crew, how she was ground staff, and how her authority was much more than being an airhostess; “I could make them miss their flight if they were rude to me! Here you just babysit them too much”. A sudden pang in my heart made want to ask her “Oh yeah? So why did you become cabin crew? How much did you lie in the interview to say that you were so customer oriented, and team oriented? And I know you don’t remember but because of you I almost missed my grandmother’s funeral!”
Then I pictured everybody suddenly staring at us, hoping that this wouldn’t turn out to be a cat fight and a cheeky crew grabbing his i phone out promptly. Thus Instead, I smiled and asked “So why did you become cabin crew if you loved being ground staff so much?”
“I thought it was a freaking paid vacation, you travel everywhere in the world and get paid to do so!” and I was glad that I could say out loud to her face “So you thought wrong?” She proudly tossed her head up and said “I am going back to being ground staff soon!” and walked away without even attending to a passenger call bell. What she thought a vacation was the constant hours of customer care, jet lagged body, 50 cups of coffee to stay awake at odd hours, and the responsibility of being in charge of safety and security of hundreds of passengers.
Although I cannot emphasise the joyful and memorable moments of meeting amazing people, see the amazing cultures and wonders of the world and the constant feeling of freedom amongst the clouds, not anyone and everyone can be an airhostess. Definitely, not an obnoxious person likes herself!
Love, Dany
Comments (0)
Leave Comment