One thing that’s endlessly great about the internet is how it can make us interested in things we didn’t have much reason to even think about before.
And in recent times, it seems that more people have become curious about the insider secrets among flight attendants than we might have expected.
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Sure, some of these secrets turn out to be practical for travelers, but others are simply the reasons behind the subtle behaviors flight attendants show on every journey.
But of course, one of the things that customers get the most curious about when it comes to service jobs concerns the thingsemployees hate dealing with the most. And while some may come as a surprise, others are merely shocking for the fact that so many people do something so obviously bad.
When flight attendant Caroline Mercedes went over her biggest passenger pet peeves, she didn’t have to think too hard about which one infuriates her coworkers the most.
And as she wrote in an article for Insider, that concerned customers poking and grabbing flight attendants to get their attention.
She finds this behavior particularly baffling since it’s not like people tend to assume they can do that at a fast food restaurant or a retail store, so why do they do it on planes?
As she put it, “Use your voice, use your call button, raise your hand … anything. But please stop touching us.”
Of course, that doesn’t mean that passengers can’t also find ways to abuse the call button.
And it seems that the most common reason to do this is to hand the flight attendant trash that they might not have a bag or gloves to collect.
Although it is part of a flight attendant’s job to collect trash after they serve drinks or meals, Mercedes recommended saving any additional trash in an unused motion sickness bag and handing it in once the flight is over.
Also, she wanted to stress that arguing with flight attendants about the airline’s mask policy will get you nowhere.
In her words, “I didn’t sign up to be the face-mask police when I got this job but regardless of where you or I stand when it comes to masks, it’s still my job to enforce the mask policy on the airplane as long as the CDC and the Federal Aviation Administration require it during air travel.”
And if a passenger refuses to comply with this policy, all they’ll accomplish is getting themselves removed from the plane and possibly barred from further flights with that airline.
She also really hates it when customers take their shoes off during the flight and she’s not alone on that one.
It’s apparently not uncommon to see customers walk around barefoot and flight attendants always find it really gross.
And as we can see from the way one passenger responded to one of their neighbors doing this, it’s likely a sentiment shared by everyone else around the person who does this.
It turns out that we also pick really inopportune times to go to the bathroom.
I say “we” because this is something I’ve been guilty of myself. Mercedes said that on almost every flight, she can expect to see a line for the bathroom during boarding and to see it return right after the seatbelt sign is turned off.
The problem is that the first bathroom rush makes boarding slower, while the second makes it harder to bring out the drink cart.
She recommends going in the terminal before boarding or waiting until service is finished, but all I’ll say in my defense is that our bladders don’t always have such a great sense of timing.
But there is another similarly disruptive behavior that nobody really has to do.
According to Mercedes, some passengers will head for the galley areas in the front or back of the plane to stretch their legs.
Although she understands the general need to do this on a plane, it makes the flight crew’s jobs harder when it’s done in the area where the carts and the flight attendants sit.
It’s also against FAA regulations to have passengers gather in these spaces.
While the list of annoying customer behaviors goes a little longer than that, these were some of the most aggravating ones. At least we know what to avoid doing now.
h/t: Insider
