Musings of a former flight attendant a.k.a. people are funny by accident.

People are funny. They don’t usually know it, but that blissful unawareness is the secret sauce from which hilarity ensues. People are accidentally hysterical and I know this to be a fact because I witnessed it over and over and over again when I was a flight attendant.

Although my career path in aviation has shifted from flying to marketing, make no mistake about it: days on the road in uniform were, and will probably always be, my favorite. I learned that while some people are challenging, and a select few are truly terrible, the overwhelming majority of humans are wonderful - truly.

. . .

Our galley gossip was often sharing stories about the unbelievable antics we pulled on our layovers or witnessed onboard. We were conscious about not becoming bitter, jaded flight attendants because we knew that the day we stopped laughing would be the day we snapped – mentally, physically, and spiritually.

Around that same time, NicoDerm released a commercial that perfectly summed up the future we were trying desperately to avoid. Check it out here:

. . .

Early in my flying days, I voluntarily picked up a poorly constructed, low-paying, dreadfully labor-intensive trip assignment because it was snowing in Boston and a triple layover in Syracuse sounded sunnier. I won no awards for my judgment calls back then. Despite being based in Boston, this trip touched New York every day for 4 days and anyone who has flown in the New York airspace knows that the odds are never in your favor when you tempt fate at JFK. In the winter. When it’s snowing. 

So, there I was standing at the boarding door greeting customers on a routine early morning hop to Charlotte. I instantly regretted my decision to wake up when a twenty-something with no shoes on, torn black spandex, a pink t-shirt, and a torn orange moo-moo with wilted flowers in her hair paused in the forward galley.

Me: Good morning, welcome aboard.

She stared at me blankly – frozen, like a deer that has just seen an oncoming car.

Me: Did you need help with something?

Customer: What do I do now?

I looked both ways to make sure I wasn’t on Candid Camera.

Me: You sit, ma’am.

Customer: Where?

Me: In your assigned seat, ma’am.

Customer: How do I know where that is?!

She sighed, arms flailing in the wind, as if she was asked to contemplate the meaning of life while balancing on one foot, juggling seven oranges on a tight rope over the Grand Canyon.

Me: Your seat is 17D – it’s the window seat on your left side at row 17.

Customer: Where is row 17?

Me: It’s between 16 and 18.

Customer: Is it far?

We were on a plane with 100 seats and 25 rows. Nothing was far. A sneeze in the forward galley could rattle a metal container in the rear galley. If the captain coughed in the cockpit, you could hear it in the back lavatory. I could throw a frisbee further than the length of the cabin and I can’t even play T-ball properly.

The passenger in 1B was staring at me, mouth agape. He said nothing, but I’m certain he was trying to understand how I didn’t take my head, insert it into an open overhead bin, and slam the door shut. Repeatedly.

Trust me, I considered it.

Empathy, Ben. Where is your empathy? Maybe she’s nervous. Maybe she doesn’t fly much. Maybe she never learned to count! That must be it. I’m lost in thought, rationalizing the irrational in my head when a middle-aged woman boards our Carolina-bound flight.

“Hello, good morning,” I say, noticing her denim Mickey Mouse hat and instantly wishing I had gotten a second cup of coffee.

Cue the monologue.

It’s as if she knew she was now on stage, perfectly framed by the iridescent, slightly yellowed galley light – a spotlight over her Canadian Tuxedo patched with flowers, cartoon characters, and for reasons never determined, one lonely picture of Mike Tyson.

“Yes, hi, hello, how are you today?” she responds, smiling. “May I have a bottle of water?”

My dear reader, let me break for just a moment to tell you this: if you didn’t find the time nor the $3 to buy a bottle of water in the terminal, trust me when I tell you: judgment has likely been passed (whether it was deserved or not) and nobody cares why you want the water, so please don’t share the story.

She continued.

“I need to take an anti-diarrhea pill.”

I swear I saw Mike Tyson’s face flinch.

“I get awful stomach cramps when I fly. I don’t know why, never figured that one out. I’m not a nervous flyer. But I keep the tabs right here just in case I get the poops and it’s so much easier to take them with water,” she says, joyfully pointing to a pill-laden black leather fanny pack slouching sideways off her waist.

No further questions, your honor.

The lesson? Be nice to your crew. And if you can’t be nice, be funny. Even if you don’t intend to be. It’ll make that discounted glass of house red wine on the layover in dreary, wintry Syracuse taste less like it came from a totally corked, expired bottle.