What I am about to say may offend some....but I know I am right. So there.

Okay. I am going to preface this by saying I jut got finished talking to Todd about this, so I am still kind of riled up about it, and my adrenaline is pumping. Stuff like this makes me really angry. Arrgh!!!

Okay. Deep breath. Well, I just worked a direct flight from Houston to Honolulu where I was door greeter on the 767-200. This mainly means that I stand by the main entrance to the plane and tell people where to go to get to their seats in an orderly fashion during boarding. Well, at the very end of boarding this woman comes on with two kids - one boy who looks to be about 4 years old and an infant daughter along with all the accoutrements that said children might need on a nearly 8 hour flight. This is a little atypical because they should have been pre-boarded (came on first) because they obviously are going to take a long time to get settled in. She is traveling alone with her two children but had enlisted another passenger to drag her ginormous carseat for her boy down the jetway understandably. So I take a look at her seat, notice that she only bought two seats for the three passengers (another issue - something that I think is enormously unsafe but whatever....that's for another day). She has 18E and F. So I make it known to her that she absolutely must put the carseat in 18E so as not to block 18D's potential escape route in an emergency. I did my job, she went down the aisle to her seat. She did exactly the opposite of what I said. Of course. She installed her carseat at the aisle seat at 18F to block everyone in, and stall egress in the event of an emergency evacuation. I didn't actually see this, I was still up at the front of the plane, but another flight attendant, Ron, did catch it and told her that she must move the carseat.

Apparently she ignored his request. When he came back to check on her she hadn't done it and said she wasn't going to, and asked for his name. Jesus! Whenever this happens alarms go off in a flight attendants head, because airline management has a tendancy to believe any sort of ridiculous story that a passenger tells over their own trained professional employees; so, smart guy, Ron got our lead flight attendant, Shahid involved, who also got a ground agent involved. Long story short, I somehow got volunteered to hold her really sticky infant during boarding while the carseat got moved. If you know me, you know that I was born without the mommy gene. So, really, this lady is already not one of my favorite passengers. Didn't listen when I clearly directed her to do a simple task, making me be a babysitter, and already taking names to throw fellow crew members under the bus.

So, at the very beginning of the flight it is my position to sell headsets in the main cabin. So I have a little tray of them. The lady's 4 year old was out of control. I mean like Seed of Chucky style. Yelling at the top of his lungs "MILK!!!!!" Kicking, throwing some sort of graham cracker on the floor. She asks me if there is milk on the plane, to which I say "Yes, it is on the barcart, which is being set up at the moment. We are still climbing, it'll be about 10 minutes and we'll be out with a beverage and meal service." I was selling headsets at the time, remember. To which this bitch said, "well, if you want him yelling like this for ten minutes then fine," and rolled her eyes at me. What the fuck? It's not my responsibility to control and/or discipline your brat or to provide Chucky with his every demand. You, as a parent, should be prepared. So I continued walking through the cabin selling headsets. Water off a duck's back.

Just to let you all know, there isn't much milk on our flights. We have probably 24 pints in the main cabin. 12 pints are fat free. 6 pints for each of whole and fat free for each aisle; and 2 on each beverage cart are designated for our "creamer" for coffee and tea. Chucky drank all our milk. And then pointed to the ones on the cart for the creamers and screamed for those and cried like a bansie when we refused to give them to him. I am not shitting you.

So I go on break with Ron. Nice crew rest. We have a few giggles about the bitch with the milk. When we come up early, Debbie tells us that Lisa talked to Chucky's mom when she gave him the little airplane kid's wings. Okay. First - WTF! This lady has already threatened to write up one of your co-workers and you're codling them. My advice is to only deal with them when it is absolutely necessary - like during beverage services. Anything else is rewarding bad behavior. So already I was a little ticked off with my fellow flight attendants. I could tell Ron was too. So apparently Chucky's mom told Chucky to put the wings on his forehead. "Go ahead, stick 'em to your forehead!" This woman is an idiot.

So then Debbie goes into this sob story about how Chucky's dad is in Iraq and blah, blah, blah. About how she feels so bad for this woman, she's so lost. At that point I couldn't take it anymore, I snapped at Debbie, adrenaline pumping. This is what I said paraphrasing because I was fed up with Debbie, Chucky, his mom and all the bitches like her "You know what? That is bullshit! So what her husband's in Iraq? That has no effect on me, whatsoever. I came from a military family. That bitch needs to pull it together! Her husband needs to know that his family is a strong one and doesn't need to rely on the sympathy of others to get by. She needs to step up to the plate and be a parent to those kids! She knew what she was getting into when she married into the military. Her husband is off fighting a war and what is she doing? She sure as HELL isn't keeping the home fires burning! She is a complete mess!"

Debbie just sat there for a moment with her mouth gaping open and then said "Girl, you are in the wrong business."

I honestly think I am right on this one.

Oh, and as an added bonus, when we landed in Honolulu, the seats they were seated in were complete disaster zones. I mean food ground into them, wrappers on the floor, cups, ice, shit everywhere. I wish I would have thought to take a picture. Damn it.

Christmas in Honolulu

As I mentioned in my prior blog, I flew to Honolulu over Christmas. This was my doing, as I picked this trip out of a list of many others because I wanted to A) work as little as possible and B) be able to call my family and friends without a trans-Atlantic phone card. Amazingly enough, no big problems occurred on the flight over. I slept most of the way, as I was deadheading. I did have the frustrating realizationg that my sort of new iPod needs to have a lot more music downloaded on it to be a viable source of entertainment for an eight hour flight, though. I must have listened to Simon & Garfunkel's the Boxer and Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire 20x each. Wide spectrum of musical variety there.

Whilst in Honolulu, I did not do much. I did have high aspirations - Catholic guilt led me to put Midnight Mass on my to-do list, along with tanning on the beach, a brisk morning walk, and maybe some shopping at Ala Moana Mall. None of these things materialized. I did make it to Duke's with some of the crew for some appetizers and a Lava Flow ( a heavenly concoction of pineapple juice, coconut milk, strawberry puree and spiced rum). Then I called my parents who were at my sister's house doing the tradional unwrapping presents gig, and then my best friend from Guam called and we talked for about an hour, and then I crashed. Quite literally, the radio was on when I woke up at 1 in the afternoon. I don't really know what my problem is with sleep, but it is a massive one.

When I rolled out of bed I went to the best sushi joint on O'ahu, and I am going to use the remainder of this blog as a shamless plug for my favorite restaurant ever in existance, Doraku. http://www.dorakusushi.com/I have been going to this place at least once every layover I have in Hono since this place opened in early Spring 2008. I even asked for a discount card one time I was in there; the waitress looked put on the spot, but talked to her manager and gave me some sort of card meant for concierges and the like. It gives me 1 point for every dollar spent and when I get 250, I het a $25 giftcard. Needless to say, I was way pumped to be in such an exclusive club! But, since then they have started giving these "D Club" cards to anyone who asks. Not so exclusive anymore, but I was the one who started the ball rolling! See what I started! :D So anyways, I got the same waitress on Christmas who I had originally asked for a discount from and she recognized me and gave me a free dessert! Yay! This place rocks! And, post script, the tempura bananas are delish!

First Blog

I have jumped on the cyber bandwagon, and Liz (a.k.a. Agent DragonFly) has set me up with a Blog. I will most likely use this as a place to bitch about stupid things that other people do, but you never know, I have also been known to do massively stupid things too. ;)

I am working on Christmas, and I am using the word 'working' loosly, as I am deadheading to Honolulu, spending 31 hours there, and working the 7:40 hr flight back. I am sure that this will illicit a blog, because nothing screams stupid airline story as flying on a holiday. I'll keep you posted!

:)