I’ve worked customer service jobs in a handful of different industries, and I can pretty confidently say that travelers are the second-most demanding, abrasive, and entitled group of people in the world.  Second only to holiday travelers.  One holiday season, I was pulling a 12-hour shift at the front desk of a four season resort on Christmas Eve.  At 11pm, a woman came in and screamed and spat at me for 20 minutes, telling me “You have RUINED Christmas!” all because I wouldn’t wash her towels for her.  And get this — she wasn’t even staying at our resort. She was renting a condo near our resort.  Point being, customer service jobs suck.  You take all the abuse for things that are never your fault.

This experience has given me supreme respect for people who work as flight attendants, which I imagine is one of the most trying careers there is.  People are so grouchy when they fly, and everyone resents the airlines for jacking ticket prices and ripping them off with extra fees.  Flight attendants are the face of the airlines, and end up taking all the crap, even though none of them were in on the board meeting where someone decided it would be a good idea to charge $7 per drink.

Flight attendants clean up after you, serve you and answer your questions, no matter how inane, and their number one priority is to keep you safe, even when you treat them in such a way that makes them want to throw you off the aircraft at 35,000 feet.  Somehow, they manage to do all this with a smile.  I know I wouldn’t last more than one flight without losing my composure and going apeshit on the guy who blames me for turbulence or weather delays in Chicago.  I could never do this job — could you?

I don’t think that many flight attendants truly hate their jobs, but I’ve certainly seen them take a lot of abuse that I know they don’t deserve.  That’s why it’s important to me to do what I can to make sure the FAs know I appreciate them.  I got the idea from Heather Poole, a flight attendant and writer, that a small gesture can really go a long way.  She mentioned once that flight crews really love it when passengers give them candy, so every time I fly, I bring a bag of chocolates to give to the crew when I board the plane.  At the very least, it perks them up and they’re extra nice to me, because they can count on me not to be an abusive jerk.  Often I’ll get a free drink or two from a thankful flight attendant.  And I’m pretty sure that if we crash landed on a deserted island, the crew would help protect me from getting eaten by the other passengers when the time comes to resort to cannibalism.

Look, you’re probably paying a few hundred bucks for this flight anyway — what’s another $3 for a bag of candy?  Chances are, the special treatment you’ll get in return is worth way more than that anyway.  But don’t do it for the free cocktails — be kind to your crew because you know they deserve it.  Turn off your phone when they say so.  Pretend to listen to the safety instructions.  Don’t make a mess around your seat.  Say “please” and “thank you.”  It really shouldn’t require any extra effort.

The secret to special treatment on your next flight is simple:  just be kind to your crew.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 13th, 2009 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.