Flight Attendant, My First Day

What did I know?

Well, there was this time when I was a brand new flight attendant. It would be my first flight and I had an interesting experience worth writing about.

This was pre-flight and no passengers had boarded yet. I was in the galley preparing the drink cart set up when someone tapped me on the shoulder and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I turned around to find the cockpit crew standing there wringing their hands and looking worried.

“You’ve got to help us. We won’t be able to take off until someone locates the round metal mista-transi-condre-diginator. It’s a part we need for insertion into the mechanical disparagional diflector so we’ll be able to takeoff.

You’ll have to hurry, it’s very important.”

“What does it look like and where is it?”

“Well, that’s why we’ve asked you to get it. It should be in the back lavatory. The cleaning crew is in there now refilling paper towels, but this can’t wait. Ask them to leave.

We have to get back to the cockpit to continue our pre-flight.”

“But where in the lavatory? How will I know if I’ve found it?”

“You’re new, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s metal and it’s a wide, large circle. The cleaning crew puts a new one in before every flight. It has to be kept damp, so they put it down in the … uh … in the toilet. Look, just reach down inside, feel around, and you’ll find it.

Bring it to us right away so we can plug it in and finish the pretrip checklist.  I don’t know how they overlooked such an integral part.”

“Wait … it’s WHERE? I have to put my hand down inside the WHAT? I don’t know that I want to DO that.”

“Do you want to keep flying with TWA? We can pull one of the other flight attendants from their preflight check to do it, but it won’t look good on our report that you turned us down, you know.”

“Geez oh man. Fuck-it. Okay, okay.  I’ll go get it.”

Fast forward ten minutes … with both hands forever dyed blue, I went into the cockpit to tell them I had tried my best, but I was unable to locate the mista-transi-condre-diginator. 

They burst out laughing! They had pranked the new kid and she fell for it.

… hook, line and sinker.

I’m convinced the creator of the “SMURFS” was on that flight. When he saw my hands, he decided to make Smurfs blue …

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
Quora Top Writer 2018.
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