Fear of Flight Attendants

Today we had brunch with Carter’s Godmother Suzanne and her husband Steve and sons Jack and Oliver. Since we are the oldest of friends and our kids have grown up together it always makes for a great morning. Carter feels most at home with them because they are a tall family. I am like a Chihuahua around them, they can hear me but I have to jump up to be seen. Even Oliver who is in sixth grade is passing me in height.

Jack is a major runner so he was very interested in my walking life. I told him that this morning on CBS Sunday morning they were talking about the Kenyan marathon winner who trains by running 100 miles a week. Jack said that he runs about 40 miles a week in track season and 70 in cross-country. I felt a great amount of satisfaction in my walking almost 70 miles a week. Just a little further and perhaps I could be a winning marathon…walker?

Sadly after brunch we had to leave to go to the airport. I won’t say which airline we were flying, but it was not Southwest, United, Jet Blue or Delta. The security line was practically non-existent so we got to the gate with enough time to sit down. Thankfully we wiggled our way between the hundreds of other waiting passengers and found seats right beside the gate agent and her co-worker Leroy.

For the half an hour we waited I got a loud earful of all the times Leroy had thrown passengers off planes, threatened to ban them from ever flying again or purposely left carry-on bags of passengers he did not like the jet way. It was like a Saturday Night Live routine of the worst customer service stories you would never want your customers to hear.

If I had been this guys boss and heard him recounting his horrible behavior to a co-worker whether there were passengers listening or not I would have done everything possible to fire him. Leroy is not the first flight attendant of this particular carrier that I have heard boast about treating perceived trouble making passengers badly. Why is it that some flight attendants feel they need to broadcast their poor customer service skills?

I never hear a check out person at the Harris Teeter talk about pain in the ass customers and I sure see plenty of them. I can’t think of a time that I heard an employee in a public facing job brag about being rude, except at the airport.

Thankfully Leroy was not our flight attendant, he was just there to bitch with the gate agent. I still made sure that I was not my normal Chihuahua self, drawing attention as I boarded the plane. I did not want Leroy to throw my plane checked carry-on bag off the jet way.