Straight Guy Lesson #8- Flight Attendant Interview Gone Wrong

What could be worse than the Flight Attendant Interview?  Well, what’s worse than dealing with those questions we’ve all heard a million times is sitting on a bus in between two people when one is giving the other the Flight Attendant Interview.

I knew from the second I sat down that the young blonde was a flight attendant, I saw a bidsheet sticking out of her bag.  There was only one empty seat on the M60 bus leaving La Guardia and it was right between this girl and this older guy.  He was probably thirty-something but still a lot older than this girl.  I guess they were already talking before I got on, so immediately I was right in the middle of their conversation.  I tried to ignore it but that was just impossible since they were both leaning in towards each other, right in my lap. I wanted to pass the time talking on the phone but it was in my front pocket and I couldn’t get to it because the guy was all up in my bidness.

They chatted for ten minutes about where they were from and where they’ve lived and finally, inevitably, it came out that for the last five glorious months she’s been a flight attendant for Delta Airlines.  Then the questions came like an avalanche.  What is your route?  How long do you get to stay at the city you fly to?  Do they put you up at a hotel?  Do you get to fly for free?  Have you almost ever crashed?  Do you see many people trying to join the mile high club?  blah blah blah.  I’ve heard it all before and can seriously answer the questions in my sleep even before the person asks them.

I really felt for the girl.  It pains me to hear someone go through that but the terrible part was that she was so new, young, and cheery that she actually enjoyed answering all these questions.  I was horrified!  I give one word answers but she was expanding on hers.  The whole interview should have taken seven minutes and forty-three seconds if she did it right.

To make it even worse, she didn’t even answer the questions correctly!  She’d give an answer that was glorious or horrible about the job and it wouldn’t even be true.  It might be randomly true one time but if you’ve been flying for more than five months, you’d know that it’s completely, totally untrue over the course of a career.

I wanted to jump in and correct her on certain things but I knew it wasn’t any of my business.  Actually that isn’t really what stopped me.  I have no problem butting into that conversation.  What stopped me was that I could tell the guy was really into the girl by the way he nervously and uncomfortably tried to ask more and more questions to keep the conversation going.  He seemed like a nice guy and me butting in might disrupt the little thing they had going.  She was obviously into their exchange so why do I need to get involved?  He might see me jumping in as some kind of cock-blocking and I don’t want to do that.  She, being a sweet as pie girl from South Carolina, probably would’ve started including me in the conversation and might even start asking me a bunch of questions and ignoring him.

No, I did the right thing by not saying anything but I would’ve given anything for an IPod to suddenly materialize on my head.  The more interest he showed, the more cocky she got.  I thought she was getting kinda boastful when she talked about how cool it was to have a morning macchiato at the Trevi Fountain and then dinner on a rooftop in Manhattan in the same day.  Of course it is!  Everyone in the world knows that would be brilliant, but you don’t need to sound so proud of yourself.  I’ve been guilty of thinking how bad ass it is to see a soccer game in Milan and the very next day catching US Open tennis in New York.  I catch myself in these thoughts but would never in a million years say them out loud.  I don’t want to be that guy.

Still though, he was totally into everything she was saying and completely validating her superiorness.  What annoyed me the most, even more than the airline lies, was when she started dissing New York City because it’s not acceptable to go out in scrubby clothes like it is in Charleston.  I can’t believe I was able to hold me tongue!  She thought it was just the coolest thing in the world that you can go to the beach all day and then go to a bar in your flip-flops and no one would say a word.  She didn’t understand why New York wasn’t like that and that everyone spends at least four hours getting ready for a night out, even to the local bar, dressed to the nines.  Where the fuck is this girl hanging out?  Has she never set foot downtown?  Or in Brooklyn?  I defy you to find someone at Max Fish who doesn’t look like they woke up in a gutter and then dragged themselves up to the bar.

Yeah she’s new to New York but I think after Week 2 I’d found some low-key, hometown dives.  You can walk into a bar in flip-flops and a ratty t-shirt in every single US city I can think of.  That’s not exclusive to Charleston, South Carolina.  The guy (who was born in Jersey, moved to Pennsylvania, then Arizona, and now New York) kept his mouth shut and didn’t even challenge this notion at all.  I was sweating and squirming in my seat.  He must have really wanted to screw her.  Even if I really REALLY wanted to win over a hot young stewardess on a bus, I still would’ve corrected her on this outlandish misconception.  Enough is enough!

I mean just by throwing out the names of a couple of neighborhoods or bars that are slack like that, he might have bought himself several dates with this girl.

“Oh, you need to go down to the East Village, Lower East SIde, or even out to Brooklyn then.  I could show you a ton of amazing places where the people are real and down to earth, and wearing flip-flops with unwashed hair.  My favorite place is (insert specific bar here, preferably somewhere obscure that she can’t find on her own and will need you as an escort)”

“Oh wow, that would be awesome!  I’d love to check out some places like that.  Places like in Charleston, South Carolina.”

Boom!  Just like that they have plans and you know she’ll be excited about it.  It doesn’t even have to come off like a date, just a local showing a nice transplant where to have a good time.  I really hope that all went down after I got off the bus.  I seriously doubt it by the way he just kept letting her talk and talk and talk but who knows, maybe he grew a pair and popped the question.

Straight Guy Lesson #7 Hitting on Passengers

Women love a man in uniform.  That is, unless it’s a flight attendant uniform.  Then it changes to Women laugh at a man in uniform.  It’s not stylish.  It doesn’t flatter.  It doesn’t demand respect.  It doesn’t make women want to rip off their clothes.  Other men in uniform just have to put on their rags, stand on a street corner, and girls will swoon: policemen, firemen, pilots, military men, athletes.  We don’t have that power, not at all, not even a little bit.  In fact we have to work extra hard to compensate for the layers of cheap Polish polyester blend we drape ourselves in.  I hate wearing the uniform.  I feel like I don’t have a personality in it.

There is a plus side to the uniform though, if you’re extremely good at rationalizing things.  It’s this: You will never look worse than you do in your uniform.  That’s rock bottom.  If you can impress a passenger while wearing that ridiculous thing then you’ll really like your odds for when she sees you in something a little more comfortable, a little more you.  It can only improve from that first impression.  This is true with your coworkers as well.  We all look the same on the plane but when everyone meets at the hotel bar for drinks later, you get to see who people really are.  If you do have a personality, or a little bit of style, then that will go a long way.  First though, you need to set up that second meeting.  It doesn’t matter how cool you look or how charming you are over dinner if you can’t take the relationship off the plane.

The biggest weapon you have being a flight attendant is that you must talk to everyone.  It’s your job and you have to do it.  It’s really the only advantage we have over the pilots, access to the cute passengers since they’re locked up in the cockpit for their safety.  You really don’t need an opening line, you can say or ask anything you want and they pretty much have to answer you.  I think it’s a federal violation if they don’t.  Use that to your advantage.  Threaten that the police will meet the flight if they don’t answer you when you ask their sign.  Show them the flex cuffs.

There’s no rush in talking to a cute passenger, they’re stuck with you for a predetermined period of time so you can come up with a plan of attack.  It’s not like seeing someone at a bar and not knowing how long they’re going to be there.  Time is on your side.  A word of warning though, if you sit on your  jump seat and there’s a potential target right in front of you while you’re getting ready for take-off, there’s a ratio between the amount of time you wait before you say something and how quality the comment needs to be.  Just like anywhere else, even if you say something boring right off the bat, it’s much better than if you sit there uncomfortably for a few minutes and then say the same lame thing.  If you wait a little too long then it’s obvious that you’ve been thinking of what to say so it’d better be gold.  You need to come off as the type of person who talks to anyone and everyone.  When in doubt, just ask the person if they’re going home or away from home.  It’s normal and harmless and starts a conversation, plus you get to find out where the person lives.

The ability to give out amenities is huge.  ”Free Drinks” is a classic tactic and will never go out of style.  It costs you nothing.  It’s not like at a bar where you have to part with your hard earned cash.  Let the airline pay for your social experiment. Girls like drinks and the alcohol will cloud their judgement.  I rarely date passengers but every time it’s happened, “Free Drinks” was how it all got started.  Upgrading someone to First Class is a bold move and usually reeks of desperation.  If the girl is traveling with a friend or a small group and you can upgrade all of them, then that’s a different story.  They’ll all be thrilled and you can just sit back while they all praise you to no end.  You can single-handedly get their big trip off to an epic start and they will never forget it.

If you’re lucky the passenger you like will come to the back of the plane so you can do your flirting in private.  While they’re waiting for the occupied bathroom is the absolute best time to talk to someone.  They’re stuck.  Even if the bathroom is Vacant, lock it when you see her heading back.  That will give you a few minutes before you “figure out” that there really isn’t anyone in the Occupied lavatory.  If they stick around after they use the facilities instead of going straight back to their seat then that’s a pretty big indicator that she’s keen.

Next to that, pray that she’s on the aisle so you can kneel beside her and have a conversation without disturbing anyone else.  You don’t want anyone to listen to you openly flirt, that can get awkward.  The worst situation is when they’re sitting at the window and you have to talk over two strangers.  You have to really want to ask her out if you’re going to put yourself through that hellish public spectacle.  If you’re talking to someone at the window then it’s not just her row that will be able to hear you.  The row in front and behind will also be listening and watching the whole scene play out.  That is your last resort and usually happens after the Captain has told the flight attendants to “Prepare for Landing.”  No more chances of her going to the bathroom, it’s now or never.

Your girl coworkers are in that lucky position to where the job and uniform add to a universal male sexual fantasy.  Just being there live and in-person makes them desirable.  Only deviants fantasize about male flight attendants.  It won’t be as easy for you but you’ll still get plenty of chances to meet people from all over the world.  Just play it cool and remember that you’ll fail more than you succeed, and that’s okay.  If a girl shoots you down then just wait a few hours and you’ll get a whole new batch of passengers stuck in a small space with you for hours at a time.  Eventually you’ll get one of them drunk enough from free vodka tonics to give you their phone number.

You know what… Now I’m thinking it may be a good thing to ask out a passenger in front of a crowd.  Who would break someone’s heart in public like that- kinda like how the girl always acts like she’s going to say Yes when she’s proposed to via jumbo-tron.

Straight Guy Lesson #6- The Flight Attendant Interview

The Flight Attendant Interview

Every non-airline person has always wanted to know certain things about the flight attendant job and lifestyle.  This can work for you in some rare cases, but usually it’ll lead to annoyance.  When meeting someone for the first time and the subject of employment comes up, pray that you’re not the first flight attendant they’ve ever met. If you are, they’ll take their big opportunity to ask all the questions they’ve ever wanted to know and they’ll shoot them off at you like an AK47.

The script goes something like this… Stranger in bar asks you, the aloof drunk muttering to himself, your name.  They don’t understand what you say, they just nod and smile followed by, “What do you do for a living?”  You cringe and mumble, “flight attendant”.  Their ears perk up.  At this point you know you’re either going to hear them bitch about how their last flight went horribly wrong, or you’re getting the dreaded Flight Attendant Interview.  You pray for a lost luggage story.  The stranger’s eyes widen and without a moment’s hesitation, out comes:

Are you gay?

Do you get to fly all over the world for free?

What airline do you work for?

What’s your route?

How long do you get to stay at the city you fly to?

Do they put you up at a hotel?

Do they pay for your meals when you’re away?

Do you hook up with all the stewardesses?

Are you sure you’re not gay?

Can you hook me up with a stewardess?

Can you get her to wear the uniform?

Do you like to be called a steward or a flight attendant or what?

How does your schedule work?

Do you have a boy/girl in every city?

How long have you done the job?

Where are you stationed? (yeah right, it’s like the military)

Did you have to do some kind of training or schooling?

What’s the worst thing that’s happened?

Have you ever had really bad turbulence?

Have you almost crashed and died a gruesome death?

Seriously, you’re not gay?

Do you see many people trying to join the mile high club?

Have you joined the mile high club?

How might I join the mile high club?

Do you have Buddy Passes?

Can I have a Buddy Pass?

What was your Major before you failed out of community college?

After going through that song and dance a few times you’ll just stop asking people what they do because you don’t want the question returned.  When someone asks you, just say you’re unemployed, it’s easier for everyone.  Better yet, buy a voice recorder and keep all the answers to the Flight Attendant Interview recorded and ready to go.  If someone you don’t care about starts in with the interview, just push play on the recorder, go to the bar to get yourself another drink while they listen to all the answers.  By the time you’re back they’ll know everything they ever wanted to know and you can then talk about something less painful.