rosscali
Mar 29, 08, 11:34 am
READ AND USE YOUR MIND TO FORM THE PICTURES if you will..
Waiting in the hills of Berkeley for the Bayporter van to arrive, a few minutes before the scheduled pick-up time I take myself and my suitcase out to the street, put on my hat and coat, and wait in the crisp spring air. There is plenty to look at, as I grew up here, and recently moved home. Reflection of my youth and walking to the bus to go to 4th grade is everywhere, as well as the more current settling of the earth around the house changing the sidewalks and retaining walls of everyone’s front yards. I grew up in this beautiful place, and my mother had always intended me to stay, so I came back and am doing that, and it feels nice, at least when I’m not paying bills.
At 7:32AM, I feel like calling Bayporter. They’re very good about picking you up, but maybe I should call to check. Then the van appears, and the driver gets out and thanks me for waiting outside. Inside the van I see why. A well dressed woman sits in the front row of the van, 50ish, celebrating her grey hair and not coloring it, wearing glasses, with a two 2-piece tweed suit on, and immediately asks me what time my flight is.
“9:30AM,” I reply
“How long will this take us?” She asks nervously.
“Oh, under an hour,” adding more minutes than I think it will take as it is the morning.
“An Hour! But I have a flight at 9:30AM!” (So do I but I don’t think she head that )
“Well, this is rush hour, but they always get us there efficiently.”
“We would be on the way already if we didn’t have to pick YOU up!”
:eek:
As the van driver starts down the street, he calls in his passenger count to his dispatcher: “2, to SFO.” He would rather have 10 people I am sure, and I gather this lady has not seen what it could be like. She asks him what time he thinks we will get to the airport, and the driver replies 8:15AM. We speed down the hill and I am airborne briefly as I bounce off the seat about 4 times on the way to the Eastshore Freeway. Traffic is surprisingly light on the freeway but the woman leers steadfastly ahead as if we have yet to reach hyperspace. If my ... in the air a few minutes before was any indication, I think we’re going about as fast as we should be going.
We fly through the toll plaza and I wonder if everyone is on spring break. They must be talking this up on the morning news shows as a very light day going over the bridge.
At 8:00AM we are near what used to be called Candlestick Park, but its name has changed so many times I don’t bother to know what its called now. The lady with the 9:30AM flight removes her boarding pass from her purse. United flight 8 to JFK – same as me. United Business, also same as me. Oh No!, what if she is sitting next to me? I really hope we make it and I really think we will with 1:25 to spare before the departure of this domestic flight, and I hope this woman never goes to Ulan Batar, because she’ll never make it there. While I’m listening to my favorite songs OVER and OVER again on my iPod, I look for signs of relaxation in my fellow passenger’s face, but there is none. Living in Hawaii for 9 years taught me a lot about trying to relax and possibly live a few more years. You can’t drive fast there, and people work and accomplish things as they do everywhere else but at a different pace than on the mainland. Accepting it, versus fighting it, is the key.
I feel like I shouldn’t be going on this trip, so when the Bayporter Van arrives and I am standing out there in front of my house, I decide that it is OK to go for some reason. My mobile phone is quiet as it normally is. I have a plan to reunite with friends and go to this party I always go to at this time of year in New York, but my sister is very ill and is in the hospital, and for the past three nights I have been there, after work, with her, talking to her, talking about what lay ahead, and it was rather heartbreaking. She was always telling us for the past five months that she is kicking this disease but 72 hours before now she told me she just wants to buy whatever time she can; she has accepted something and it is a bit of a relief, but also so very sad. We lost our mother close to 2 years before and now this. While a weekend trip sounds like nothing to most FlyerTalkers, watching your older sister in the throws of stage IV cancer and all the horribleness that comes with it is truly heart wrenching. I also used online check in for this flight, as my traveling companion in the van did, but only a few minutes before the pick-up, after the final call to Alta Bates Hospital oncology unit to see how my sister’s night went. The nurses all know me; it’s like the lady at the Alaska Airlines Board Room who knows everybody, except I often wonder if this is a place where I really want to be a VIP. What is more poignant is that when I was 13 and 14, on vacation from boarding school, I was a volunteer in that place, for over 300 hours, even playing Santa Claus one year for the cancer patients left in the hospital for December 25th. Going back there invokes memories, as does flying on United because I used to be a part of that organization too. My sister got out about 3 days before Christmas 2007, but not everyone does. Comparing this to what time we will arrive in San Francisco Airport causes me to smile, and sometimes cry. We are all fragile beings in this world with finite deadlines, we should all hug each other because we are here but we don’t, because we never think about the alternative.
The Bayporter pulls to the end of the United area, which is a walk from the Premier “Lobby” they are always talking about in e-mails. I walk back there and at the front of the Business class line an agent smiles at me and calls me over to the First Class check-in. I just want to check my bag. In 30 seconds I am on my way to security, and there is no line. Another light travel day? I just don’t understand.
When I checked in this morning I looked at the seat chart. It is not a 757 in the p.s. configuration but a 767-300 3-class configuration, the same as what got me to Buenos Aires and back two weeks before. My seat, 6B, is still an aisle on that place in the second row, but I see some empty seats. I am sure that will change, but I print the boarding pass and don’t change anything.
UNITED 8C 28MAR SFO JFK 6B (767-300 3 class configuration) 932A 558P
After a quick check-in I proceed through security and to the Red Carpet Room. It is also not a zoo. I have some coffee and a banana, and look around the place. A lot of people have come in from Asia and are pretty wiped out.
At 9:00AM I assemble myself and go to the gate. Boarding is in full swing. It is a 767 as the seat chart indicated earlier. I get on the plane and sit down in 6B. It is one of those auto reclining seats, waiting to be written up for repair downline. I feel myself slide back shortly after I sit down. I put the seat back in its upright position and I am reclining again. The gentlemen next to me, a 1K, has been waiting for a while to have someone hang his jacket. The lone flight attendant in business seems to notice others but not us. I have a jacket I can put anywhere and last summer some flight attendant took it and put it in some closet and I waited until most of the people got off that 767-300 2-class configuration and then found her discussing her 401(k) with her flying partner in economy and then she realized that YES she did put my jacket somewhere and then she found it. I hope her 401(k) is kicking bootie right now in the stock market, but I don’t give my coat to the flight attendants any more, and yes I was one of them for 13 years.
When I worked for United from 1983-2001, the New York flight attendant base was a special place I always thought. They loved New York, most of them lived there, and they could handle the New York clientele, and some of the things that clientele did and said really surprised me. I can remember the guy on the flight from Chicago to LaGuardia putting his bag under the seat behind him so as not to obstruct his own legroom. Of course the passenger behind him complained, and they got into a fight during boarding. So I am this 21 year old flight attendant, wondering how best to stop this negative interference to boarding, and this New York based flight attendant with his jet-black eye-liner walks up and whispers to me: “I’ll handle this…” and then she starts yelling at both of them, really loud, and they both calm down, and the luggage is removed and put in the overhead bin. What a concept. Then we take off on our way to LaGuardia and we serve a sandwich and hot soup in a mug, and it has the United logo and the Big Apple on it. No where else did they board more food a tthe time than to and from New York, and during the whole flight everyone is complaining about how bad United is, but we are giving them more service than any other flight. Days on a flight leaving early in the morning from Omaha, three different Nebraska family matriarchs (mothers) board the flight, each with 2 dozen home baked cookies for the crew; they all asked us if we had eaten yet that morning. On that 2 hour flight, the passengers got a cup of coffee and a United napkin. The incongruity baffles me. We weren’t supposed to eat anything the passengers gave us, because in the 70ies when the upper deck of the 747-100 was a lounge, a passenger gave a flight attendant a cookie laced with PCP and she was in a coma for 4 days. He wanted to have sex with her, but she almost died instead. When I was 21 and had no money, I ate those cookies those ladies from Omaha brought, because leftover rolls from first class dipped in salad dressing gets old, quick. Yeah, they have crew meals on International flights but not on domestic.
According to the few people I stay in contact with at United I understand that those in the New York base now have no International flying, but only these trans-con p.s. trips. So, the New York-based flight attendants used to fly to London, Tokyo, and beyond but now it is only San Francisco and Los Angeles, with remnants of the service they did to those International destinations. Still they are all there, but I don’t know how happy they are to be on this 767. The plane is not full. In fact, 5CD in the first row are empty when the door shuts. Due to my reclining dilemma, I move to 5C once the seat belt sign goes off in flight. How long had it been since I’ve had an empty seat next to me?
My traveling companion from the Bayporter is a few rows back; she is trying to sleep after eating her fruit plate. The menu is impressive for domestic. They are still peddling bellinis, and have three choices for breakfast, quiche, French toast and a fruit plate. Gustavo, working in the galley, comes to take our orders. He has that concerned look I did when I was doing the same thing 10 years before, worrying that everyone will get their choice. He says “welcome aboard” to each passenger, which I never did because the entrée ordering thing was such a big deal to me; I was too preoccupied to realize we were on a flight until we took off. With age comes the realization that the meal they serve on the airplane will probably not be the last one you eat. So if you don’t get your choice try something new, but then my sister has cancer so I’ve seen the grim reaper taking his position on the other side, and feel lucky to be on this side, if you know what I mean.
After take-off the crew comes around with drinks. I have the Chandon Blanc de Noirs sparkling wine. So, if you have visited the house of Krug Champagne in Reims, twice, like I had, and spoken to Mme. Catherine Seydoux, the only female member of management at the time who was a direct descendant of the Krug family, you will leave knowing all about champagne, and you had better not forget it. Champagne traditionally is composed of Pinot Noir, Pinot Menuier, and Chardonnay grapes. Blanc de noirs, “white of the blacks” literally, is made from the two red wine grapes that are used to make traditional champagne, Pinot Noir and Pinot Menuier, no Chardonnay. This version of sparkling wine is far more common in California cuvees than those of the champagne region of France. A blanc de blanc champagne is only made from Chardonnay. A blanc de noirs should adapt to more palates than a brut on US domestic flight, as Champagne makers produce “Extra Dry” solely for the US market, which is anything but dry, but the American market buys it and likes it. Blanc de noirs sparkling wine or champagne is a beverage that is not a chore for most people to drink. The blanc de noirs has a more wholesome, fruity feel, with less acidity than a Brut. We used to serve Brut Chandon pre-departure on domestic and international. Now I am excited to be drinking Chandon blanc de noirs in-flight going cross country as this is one of United’s few flights with sparkling wine.. I wonder if someday if they come around with water like they do on Indian domestic flights if we will all go wild and write about it on FlyerTalk.
The breakfast is good and I am hungry, so the quiche I ordered tasted great. It is filled with Spinach which I love. There is also a piece of link sausage, Canadian bacon (which I always thought was created solely for airplane food, as I have never eaten it anywhere else,) and two potato pancakes. The map works on the Entertainment system but no announcement was made about the movies, so I guess they are playing but I don’t know if it is the 8 movies they play simultaneously on International or just the domestic offering.
After the meal service Gustavo passes out ½ liter bottles of water, which is really great, and he does what a flight attendant with United is supposed to do, cabin coverage. Every 15 minutes he is walking through the cabin checking on us, asking if we want something to drink. It is so easy to do, but so rarely done. I want to drink more champagne, but 4 glasses is enough. The water becomes an elixir for my body.
I look at the map showing us where we are, and we are entering Nebraska. We are flying fast, the captain has announced he thinks we will be: 15 early. I dose and awake over Erie, PA. My glass has been filled with champagne, and across the aisle Gustavo is telling the couple sitting in 5AB that we will be 30 minutes early, and now is the time for the snack. This is that deli service that used to be spread out over some console on the plane, but today the choice is roast beef and turkey, or a fruit plate. The woman to my right eats fruit for the second time. I eat the “deli” plate as they love to call it. Dipping broccoli into ranch dressing isn’t bad, but then I am from Berkeley, where as I walk to work on days that I do, I see a SUV=WMD sticker on every street sign I pass. If you can walk to work you should, you would see so much more than from your car. Where I live walking makes things beautiful, and I strive to find this in our world. Driving in Berkeley makes life horrible, so I have resigned to walking, whenever my sister isn’t in the hospital.
These certificates they give you when you are a Premier or a Premier Exec. Going the extra mile.. etc. they all compute into different pins that the flight attendants wear, usually each year there is a new pin, or different type of pin, depending upon how many certificates the flight attendant gets from customers. I haven’t worked for United for 10 years, but I am sure there is still a pin, just like at United there is always a flight for Denver boarding at some hour of the day, somewhere in the world. I think about this Gustavo dude running around on the plane, so much more approachable than the stern Asian New Yorker woman working on my side, so I prepare a “Superior Service deserves to be recognized” certificate for Gustavo. Let’s be real. If you are a male flight attendant, that means that basically, unless you are a contestant on the biggest loser, you don’t have boobs, and the possibility of getting these certificates from the average male Premier and Premier Exec customers is minimal. Sorry, but lots of “stacked” female flight attendants have gotten 25 or 35 certificates but they are complete disasters on the airplane. I got a lot of these certificates, but with a mother as a lifetime Premier Exec who always gave me a lecture when things went wrong, like at 4:00AM the lights were turned on in my room after she returned from a particularly harrowing experience and she told me about it, and the lights stayed on until she had said her piece. So, when I worked I was always thinking about all the stuff my mother, that lifetime United customer, told me, and its like a quandary and a mission at the same time, and the result is most of the time you become a flight attendant who strives to make the people happy. So, I gave Gustavo this certificate, and I don’t hand them out often, and wrote: “Thanks for the cabin coverage.” Just before landing he walked by and quietly said: “Thanks for what you wrote.”
We were in a holding pattern, delayed a bit on the tarmac, and arrived at the gate about 10 minutes late after we could have been there 30 minutes early had it not been for the JFK traffic. The rain that was threatening had blown off, and it was a chilly but clear evening when I exited the terminal, off for the subway to my friend’s place in Queens.
Waiting in the hills of Berkeley for the Bayporter van to arrive, a few minutes before the scheduled pick-up time I take myself and my suitcase out to the street, put on my hat and coat, and wait in the crisp spring air. There is plenty to look at, as I grew up here, and recently moved home. Reflection of my youth and walking to the bus to go to 4th grade is everywhere, as well as the more current settling of the earth around the house changing the sidewalks and retaining walls of everyone’s front yards. I grew up in this beautiful place, and my mother had always intended me to stay, so I came back and am doing that, and it feels nice, at least when I’m not paying bills.
At 7:32AM, I feel like calling Bayporter. They’re very good about picking you up, but maybe I should call to check. Then the van appears, and the driver gets out and thanks me for waiting outside. Inside the van I see why. A well dressed woman sits in the front row of the van, 50ish, celebrating her grey hair and not coloring it, wearing glasses, with a two 2-piece tweed suit on, and immediately asks me what time my flight is.
“9:30AM,” I reply
“How long will this take us?” She asks nervously.
“Oh, under an hour,” adding more minutes than I think it will take as it is the morning.
“An Hour! But I have a flight at 9:30AM!” (So do I but I don’t think she head that )
“Well, this is rush hour, but they always get us there efficiently.”
“We would be on the way already if we didn’t have to pick YOU up!”
:eek:
As the van driver starts down the street, he calls in his passenger count to his dispatcher: “2, to SFO.” He would rather have 10 people I am sure, and I gather this lady has not seen what it could be like. She asks him what time he thinks we will get to the airport, and the driver replies 8:15AM. We speed down the hill and I am airborne briefly as I bounce off the seat about 4 times on the way to the Eastshore Freeway. Traffic is surprisingly light on the freeway but the woman leers steadfastly ahead as if we have yet to reach hyperspace. If my ... in the air a few minutes before was any indication, I think we’re going about as fast as we should be going.
We fly through the toll plaza and I wonder if everyone is on spring break. They must be talking this up on the morning news shows as a very light day going over the bridge.
At 8:00AM we are near what used to be called Candlestick Park, but its name has changed so many times I don’t bother to know what its called now. The lady with the 9:30AM flight removes her boarding pass from her purse. United flight 8 to JFK – same as me. United Business, also same as me. Oh No!, what if she is sitting next to me? I really hope we make it and I really think we will with 1:25 to spare before the departure of this domestic flight, and I hope this woman never goes to Ulan Batar, because she’ll never make it there. While I’m listening to my favorite songs OVER and OVER again on my iPod, I look for signs of relaxation in my fellow passenger’s face, but there is none. Living in Hawaii for 9 years taught me a lot about trying to relax and possibly live a few more years. You can’t drive fast there, and people work and accomplish things as they do everywhere else but at a different pace than on the mainland. Accepting it, versus fighting it, is the key.
I feel like I shouldn’t be going on this trip, so when the Bayporter Van arrives and I am standing out there in front of my house, I decide that it is OK to go for some reason. My mobile phone is quiet as it normally is. I have a plan to reunite with friends and go to this party I always go to at this time of year in New York, but my sister is very ill and is in the hospital, and for the past three nights I have been there, after work, with her, talking to her, talking about what lay ahead, and it was rather heartbreaking. She was always telling us for the past five months that she is kicking this disease but 72 hours before now she told me she just wants to buy whatever time she can; she has accepted something and it is a bit of a relief, but also so very sad. We lost our mother close to 2 years before and now this. While a weekend trip sounds like nothing to most FlyerTalkers, watching your older sister in the throws of stage IV cancer and all the horribleness that comes with it is truly heart wrenching. I also used online check in for this flight, as my traveling companion in the van did, but only a few minutes before the pick-up, after the final call to Alta Bates Hospital oncology unit to see how my sister’s night went. The nurses all know me; it’s like the lady at the Alaska Airlines Board Room who knows everybody, except I often wonder if this is a place where I really want to be a VIP. What is more poignant is that when I was 13 and 14, on vacation from boarding school, I was a volunteer in that place, for over 300 hours, even playing Santa Claus one year for the cancer patients left in the hospital for December 25th. Going back there invokes memories, as does flying on United because I used to be a part of that organization too. My sister got out about 3 days before Christmas 2007, but not everyone does. Comparing this to what time we will arrive in San Francisco Airport causes me to smile, and sometimes cry. We are all fragile beings in this world with finite deadlines, we should all hug each other because we are here but we don’t, because we never think about the alternative.
The Bayporter pulls to the end of the United area, which is a walk from the Premier “Lobby” they are always talking about in e-mails. I walk back there and at the front of the Business class line an agent smiles at me and calls me over to the First Class check-in. I just want to check my bag. In 30 seconds I am on my way to security, and there is no line. Another light travel day? I just don’t understand.
When I checked in this morning I looked at the seat chart. It is not a 757 in the p.s. configuration but a 767-300 3-class configuration, the same as what got me to Buenos Aires and back two weeks before. My seat, 6B, is still an aisle on that place in the second row, but I see some empty seats. I am sure that will change, but I print the boarding pass and don’t change anything.
UNITED 8C 28MAR SFO JFK 6B (767-300 3 class configuration) 932A 558P
After a quick check-in I proceed through security and to the Red Carpet Room. It is also not a zoo. I have some coffee and a banana, and look around the place. A lot of people have come in from Asia and are pretty wiped out.
At 9:00AM I assemble myself and go to the gate. Boarding is in full swing. It is a 767 as the seat chart indicated earlier. I get on the plane and sit down in 6B. It is one of those auto reclining seats, waiting to be written up for repair downline. I feel myself slide back shortly after I sit down. I put the seat back in its upright position and I am reclining again. The gentlemen next to me, a 1K, has been waiting for a while to have someone hang his jacket. The lone flight attendant in business seems to notice others but not us. I have a jacket I can put anywhere and last summer some flight attendant took it and put it in some closet and I waited until most of the people got off that 767-300 2-class configuration and then found her discussing her 401(k) with her flying partner in economy and then she realized that YES she did put my jacket somewhere and then she found it. I hope her 401(k) is kicking bootie right now in the stock market, but I don’t give my coat to the flight attendants any more, and yes I was one of them for 13 years.
When I worked for United from 1983-2001, the New York flight attendant base was a special place I always thought. They loved New York, most of them lived there, and they could handle the New York clientele, and some of the things that clientele did and said really surprised me. I can remember the guy on the flight from Chicago to LaGuardia putting his bag under the seat behind him so as not to obstruct his own legroom. Of course the passenger behind him complained, and they got into a fight during boarding. So I am this 21 year old flight attendant, wondering how best to stop this negative interference to boarding, and this New York based flight attendant with his jet-black eye-liner walks up and whispers to me: “I’ll handle this…” and then she starts yelling at both of them, really loud, and they both calm down, and the luggage is removed and put in the overhead bin. What a concept. Then we take off on our way to LaGuardia and we serve a sandwich and hot soup in a mug, and it has the United logo and the Big Apple on it. No where else did they board more food a tthe time than to and from New York, and during the whole flight everyone is complaining about how bad United is, but we are giving them more service than any other flight. Days on a flight leaving early in the morning from Omaha, three different Nebraska family matriarchs (mothers) board the flight, each with 2 dozen home baked cookies for the crew; they all asked us if we had eaten yet that morning. On that 2 hour flight, the passengers got a cup of coffee and a United napkin. The incongruity baffles me. We weren’t supposed to eat anything the passengers gave us, because in the 70ies when the upper deck of the 747-100 was a lounge, a passenger gave a flight attendant a cookie laced with PCP and she was in a coma for 4 days. He wanted to have sex with her, but she almost died instead. When I was 21 and had no money, I ate those cookies those ladies from Omaha brought, because leftover rolls from first class dipped in salad dressing gets old, quick. Yeah, they have crew meals on International flights but not on domestic.
According to the few people I stay in contact with at United I understand that those in the New York base now have no International flying, but only these trans-con p.s. trips. So, the New York-based flight attendants used to fly to London, Tokyo, and beyond but now it is only San Francisco and Los Angeles, with remnants of the service they did to those International destinations. Still they are all there, but I don’t know how happy they are to be on this 767. The plane is not full. In fact, 5CD in the first row are empty when the door shuts. Due to my reclining dilemma, I move to 5C once the seat belt sign goes off in flight. How long had it been since I’ve had an empty seat next to me?
My traveling companion from the Bayporter is a few rows back; she is trying to sleep after eating her fruit plate. The menu is impressive for domestic. They are still peddling bellinis, and have three choices for breakfast, quiche, French toast and a fruit plate. Gustavo, working in the galley, comes to take our orders. He has that concerned look I did when I was doing the same thing 10 years before, worrying that everyone will get their choice. He says “welcome aboard” to each passenger, which I never did because the entrée ordering thing was such a big deal to me; I was too preoccupied to realize we were on a flight until we took off. With age comes the realization that the meal they serve on the airplane will probably not be the last one you eat. So if you don’t get your choice try something new, but then my sister has cancer so I’ve seen the grim reaper taking his position on the other side, and feel lucky to be on this side, if you know what I mean.
After take-off the crew comes around with drinks. I have the Chandon Blanc de Noirs sparkling wine. So, if you have visited the house of Krug Champagne in Reims, twice, like I had, and spoken to Mme. Catherine Seydoux, the only female member of management at the time who was a direct descendant of the Krug family, you will leave knowing all about champagne, and you had better not forget it. Champagne traditionally is composed of Pinot Noir, Pinot Menuier, and Chardonnay grapes. Blanc de noirs, “white of the blacks” literally, is made from the two red wine grapes that are used to make traditional champagne, Pinot Noir and Pinot Menuier, no Chardonnay. This version of sparkling wine is far more common in California cuvees than those of the champagne region of France. A blanc de blanc champagne is only made from Chardonnay. A blanc de noirs should adapt to more palates than a brut on US domestic flight, as Champagne makers produce “Extra Dry” solely for the US market, which is anything but dry, but the American market buys it and likes it. Blanc de noirs sparkling wine or champagne is a beverage that is not a chore for most people to drink. The blanc de noirs has a more wholesome, fruity feel, with less acidity than a Brut. We used to serve Brut Chandon pre-departure on domestic and international. Now I am excited to be drinking Chandon blanc de noirs in-flight going cross country as this is one of United’s few flights with sparkling wine.. I wonder if someday if they come around with water like they do on Indian domestic flights if we will all go wild and write about it on FlyerTalk.
The breakfast is good and I am hungry, so the quiche I ordered tasted great. It is filled with Spinach which I love. There is also a piece of link sausage, Canadian bacon (which I always thought was created solely for airplane food, as I have never eaten it anywhere else,) and two potato pancakes. The map works on the Entertainment system but no announcement was made about the movies, so I guess they are playing but I don’t know if it is the 8 movies they play simultaneously on International or just the domestic offering.
After the meal service Gustavo passes out ½ liter bottles of water, which is really great, and he does what a flight attendant with United is supposed to do, cabin coverage. Every 15 minutes he is walking through the cabin checking on us, asking if we want something to drink. It is so easy to do, but so rarely done. I want to drink more champagne, but 4 glasses is enough. The water becomes an elixir for my body.
I look at the map showing us where we are, and we are entering Nebraska. We are flying fast, the captain has announced he thinks we will be: 15 early. I dose and awake over Erie, PA. My glass has been filled with champagne, and across the aisle Gustavo is telling the couple sitting in 5AB that we will be 30 minutes early, and now is the time for the snack. This is that deli service that used to be spread out over some console on the plane, but today the choice is roast beef and turkey, or a fruit plate. The woman to my right eats fruit for the second time. I eat the “deli” plate as they love to call it. Dipping broccoli into ranch dressing isn’t bad, but then I am from Berkeley, where as I walk to work on days that I do, I see a SUV=WMD sticker on every street sign I pass. If you can walk to work you should, you would see so much more than from your car. Where I live walking makes things beautiful, and I strive to find this in our world. Driving in Berkeley makes life horrible, so I have resigned to walking, whenever my sister isn’t in the hospital.
These certificates they give you when you are a Premier or a Premier Exec. Going the extra mile.. etc. they all compute into different pins that the flight attendants wear, usually each year there is a new pin, or different type of pin, depending upon how many certificates the flight attendant gets from customers. I haven’t worked for United for 10 years, but I am sure there is still a pin, just like at United there is always a flight for Denver boarding at some hour of the day, somewhere in the world. I think about this Gustavo dude running around on the plane, so much more approachable than the stern Asian New Yorker woman working on my side, so I prepare a “Superior Service deserves to be recognized” certificate for Gustavo. Let’s be real. If you are a male flight attendant, that means that basically, unless you are a contestant on the biggest loser, you don’t have boobs, and the possibility of getting these certificates from the average male Premier and Premier Exec customers is minimal. Sorry, but lots of “stacked” female flight attendants have gotten 25 or 35 certificates but they are complete disasters on the airplane. I got a lot of these certificates, but with a mother as a lifetime Premier Exec who always gave me a lecture when things went wrong, like at 4:00AM the lights were turned on in my room after she returned from a particularly harrowing experience and she told me about it, and the lights stayed on until she had said her piece. So, when I worked I was always thinking about all the stuff my mother, that lifetime United customer, told me, and its like a quandary and a mission at the same time, and the result is most of the time you become a flight attendant who strives to make the people happy. So, I gave Gustavo this certificate, and I don’t hand them out often, and wrote: “Thanks for the cabin coverage.” Just before landing he walked by and quietly said: “Thanks for what you wrote.”
We were in a holding pattern, delayed a bit on the tarmac, and arrived at the gate about 10 minutes late after we could have been there 30 minutes early had it not been for the JFK traffic. The rain that was threatening had blown off, and it was a chilly but clear evening when I exited the terminal, off for the subway to my friend’s place in Queens.