Lazy Boy

I jumped out of bed with great enthusiasm to be on this flight. It is a lively flight to be on with great Scottish spirits. The last time I was there it was during the freezing winter time, when the crew paid a visit to the Edinburgh castle. 

The spirit of adventure is something that airhostesses have in common, and it is also something that vanishes over a period of time, especially when there is no progression or when we are getting used to the autonomous work shift patterns. An airhostess' career comes with adventure, lifestyle, bread, beauty, and most of all youngness of the heart, and team spirit.

However the MEN that we work with tend to lose the love for hard work after a while (not all but most of them). It is true that women are hard working in all aspects of life.  Even in a rural household, the mother of the family would look after a good bundle of kids, do the house work, and give a hand to the husband with cultivations. Modern day women juggle family, kids, work, and even manage multinational businesses. 

On a lovely flight like today, when people were lively and energetic, it was disheartening to be working with a couple of crew boys who were lazy.

There was one particular lazy fellow who didn’t even get off his heavy bottom to answer a single call bell. The only thing he was good at was engaging in PR or galley gossip.

Being a tall, beefy guy, he was trying to chat up a few newbie airhostesses who seemed to be engrossed in his stories about being a black belt holder and master of self-defence!  However he lacked the most admirable quality in a man or simply a human - the motivation to EARN a living.

Having answered a few good call bells for 2 hours straight, the devil in me came out when I saw this macho man gobbling down an omelette with no care in the world.  Taking a deep breath and trying hard to be as polite as I could, I asked him whether he would mind taking the next call bell. “Ding!” went the next call bell and he was still at peace with his snack. “Dude, can you hear that? Would you mind going and attending to it please?,” I asked him one more time as politely as I could and he stood up, put on an intimidating angry face and walked off to the cabin.

In a moment I got a call from the purser asking me to come down, and as I went by I saw the call bell still left unattended, and my other colleague rushing off to answer it instead. When I made it up front, where usually the purser's kingdom lies (The First Class galley), I saw the most memorable sight.

There he was - the so called black belt holder - having a mental break down, crying his eyes out, and sniffling like a giant baby. He reminded me of a boy in the kindergarten crying out for his mom, because some bully had taken his ice cream.  In my time I have made a few boys cry - ripped off my cousin’s precious Eminem poster - etc. This was different - a grown man crying and complaining that I was rude to him?!

After the explanation of what really happened, the lazy crew member (who was notorious for drama onboard), was given a time out to pull himself together (to sit back and relax).  After all, his cunning plan had worked; he had gotten attention, made a bad person out of a hard working crew member, outsmarted a manager, and in the end gotten paid for doing nothing on the flight.  I thought to myself 'Big boys don’t cry!'

Love, Dany