Day 2- Travel Tuesday- Why I became a flight attendant

After I graduated college, I approached my job search in the following way; what job would give me limited responsibility and no upward mobility but cheap travel, immense free time, and oodles of time to waste reading and doing crosswords. Or watching TV. Or something pleasurable and selfish. It was in this way that I picked my college major as well; what painful thing didn't I have to do? How could I fit skiing into my credits, and what major required the least amount of math, and no foreign language? Sign me up for that.

After an extensive search of two industries, those being food service, and flight attendant, I made my choice. I would fly till I earned my Mrs.. Then I could let someone else worry about following workplace demands like rules and etiquette. In the end, my major of Communication worked for me as a flight attendant. Being on the airplane only required that I count the liquor money, and my lack of foreign language (with a major of Communication, no less) simply meant I couldn't work Mexico City flights. I could live with that. I flew for free, indulged in hotel room PayPerView, and read. Boy, did I read. In my tenure as a flight attendant, I thumbed through every bestseller, skimmed the classics, and could tell you how to please your man in four minutes.

Immediately I started breaking the big rule. No reading on the flight attendant jump seat. At any time. And if you got caught, you got fired. I'm sure the original intention of the rule was to prevent distraction during the critical phases of flight such as take-off and landing. These are the times when you should be aware of the inside and outside of the cabin and to be able to assess ground conditions (seriously.) When you sit on a plane for 5 hours though, what do you do with yourself? After serving drinks, picking up the trash, and ignoring call buttons, you have time to kill. Asking flight attendants not to read on the jump seat is like asking a man not to read on the toilet. Everyone broke the rule. There are two types of flight attendants. One type is incredibly structured and detail-oriented. These are the ones that worked crosswords and sudoku on the jump seat. The other type are there for the bennies- fly free, don't ask too much of me, and let me catch up on my reading. That's where I fit in. In five years flying I read Ann Rule mysteries, John Grisham paperbacks, People Magazines, and the odd flight manual that was left lying around. If I left for a trip without a book in tow, I got a little nervous. What would I do with myself as I flew over Des Moines? There are only so many Christian Conversions one can undergo from fellow crew members.

This all came to my mind a couple of weeks ago, when the plane crashed down in the Hudson. Upon impact, the crew was probably chanting "BRACE, BRACE, BRACE," and determining which passengers they were going to utilize during evacuation. I know they were ready and they safely and calmly handled the evacuation. Because that's the job. But I also know that among the floating cups and stir sticks in the wet cabin , there was a puzzle book or magazine that had been hastily thrown by a panicking flight attendant. A pretty good job in retrospect; catch up on your Tolstoy and Brangelina gossip, and save a life when you need to. I miss those days. I think perhaps I might have liked that job.