Crewed Talk: Why Don’t Frustrated Flight Attendants Leave?
Sarah Steegar November 03, 2015
Charming Stewardess Holding Airplane In Hand. Sky With Clouds Background.
“Why don’t you just leave?” Whenever people write about the downsides of their job, this is what they are bound to hear from some. Crew members who write get this a lot.
As someone who makes it a point to write about both good and bad aspects of the job, and who was hired to explain a bit about what goes on behind the veneer of cheer I exhibit on the airplane (and not just extend the classic, shiny image from advertisements in my writing), the refrain can be frustrating. Today I’ve decided to address it.
As you read on, remember I personally still find much joy in the job, and some attendants are 100% happy with the way things are. Today simply isn’t about those things. It’s about a particular recurring question after some frank discussions. And it’s a fair one to ask someone who has described unpleasant things. For all the negative things you sometimes read about working for an airline today, why don’t flight attendants leave?
To do what?
We’ve no delusion we’re the only frustrated workers in the world or that things would be perfect elsewhere. It’s just that our industry has undergone a particular cultural upheaval over the last 15 years – an industry people like to talk and read about. So do we.
Meanwhile, some big things that drew us to the job are hard to find elsewhere. It’s still unique, and one thing that hasn’t changed is that “It’s not just a job, it’s a lifestyle.” Changing jobs for us is more than getting a paycheck from somewhere else. It means changing pretty much everything.
We’re invested.
Crew members have already given up a lot for the job. It’s super competitive, a huge transition and definitely not for everyone. Loads of new hires quit within the first year or two. If we make it through that, we tend to hang on tight!
The longer you’ve stayed, the more you have to lose. You’ve built up seniority, pay, friends, choice of trips. If you leave the job to give something else (or even a different airline) a go, there’s no going back to what you’ve built up. Are the changes happening in the job where you’ve accrued X number of years seniority worse than a stark start over?
Think of it like leaving a political party you’ve been dedicated to. There are few single issues one would do that for. The rest you just deal with and try to get your voice heard.
It’s too late.
While it’s common today for flight attendants to have university degrees and/or other professional experience, that wasn’t always the case. Regardless, after a certain number of years, the financial benefit lies in staying the course, especially if one has debts, dependents and/or is single.
We hope it will get better.
The airline industry is famously cyclical. My list of best to worst airlines to work for has completely reversed from when I began flying. Who’s to say it won’t switch again? Many of us harbor a stubborn hope the industry could swing back, at least somewhat. Meanwhile…
We make it work.
This, in and of itself, is a skill innate to flight attendants. Making do with what we’ve got is part of the essence of our job. So that’s what we do on a larger scale, too.
Whenever having this conversation, the trash compactor scene from Star Wars flashes to mind — except it should be a room full of things we treasure instead of rubbish! Many crew members are hanging in there, adjusting, adjusting, waiting to see how we feel when the walls will stop shifting.
One way we make it work is by using the flexibility we (some of us) still have to combine flying with some of our other passions — like writing! Neither pays very well and flying double time is hard on the body. However, they make a rare combination that works well.
We love it.
We all know love isn’t logical! Many don’t just love flying, they love their airlines (or at least did and want to) and their airline “families.” They don’t think the answer is to just leave something you love when things get tough. They think the answer is to fight for it. (After all, remember point number one?)
As I thought over this very article, I read something in a Robert Galbraith book that resonated: “Some people just can’t [understand a vocation]; at best, work’s about status and pay cheques for them, it hasn’t got value in itself.”
Flying is like that. If you don’t understand that feeling of being especially suited for some particular thing, then you won’t understand flight attendants or pilots or why we stay through all the ups and downs. It might not be what it used to be, or what we hope it can still be, but if we’re still here, it means there’s simply nothing else we’d rather do.
As others have said, these generalized arguments would just as easily characterize newspaper journalists, auto workers, skilled manufacturing employees, anyone who trained in their craft and experiences basic professional pride and whose labor protections/viability have been weakened by economics or technology. The logical fallacy in this article is that it answers a question nobody is asking -- "why don't all frustrated FAs quit being FAs?" -- rather than the actual, legitimate question every traveler is asking, namely: "why don't the most miserable FAs look for work outside the customer service business when they so clearly resent their customers and demonstrably resist being of service?" The author may feel a calling for her job, but there are many, many FAs who are clearly mismatched to the work, whether or not they feel a calling for it. I believe Jim Jones felt a calling to the ministry and Bin Laden felt a calling to be a holy warrior, too. Jayson Blair felt particularly suited to being a journalist. In all of these cases the public was harmed by what some selfish jerks felt particularly suited for.
I, with a Master's degree, spent my whole carrier squirrming about a possible layoff, adjusting to a new boss every time we had a reorganization, watching my back as I had to work with multiple maladjusted people, and many other negative factors. I too could not walk away from it all and start something new at half or one third of the salary with no benefits. So I stuck with it to support the family and keep my sanity and dignity. The only difference here is that my job was in a cubicle and not in customer service. So whenever I vented out my frustration, it was never heard by our customers. So, every occupation, every job carries with it, many disappointments. To think that aviation related jobs are the only ones with too much stress and no option to leave is not true. And to subject your customers to the results of your frustrations is undesirable. If you scratch the surface, you will find virtually everyone trying to get by because they have debts and responsibilities. These are not unique to any one profession.
If they can't compartmentalize that frustration and simply execute on their job performance, they need to leave and not subject the flying public to their misery.
That last is the truth - FAs would be even more miserable if they did leave and had to take a serious pay cut and lose benefits.
This is all common sense, no fault of the writer but these are the same answers for anyone. No one wants to just leave a secure job and start anew, most people can't afford to up and quit without a plan in mind. Also once you get to a certain age it feels like it's too late to do anything else. The one issue I took umbrage with was the "making due"...hold on. Maybe it's just the choice of wording but any time you work DIRECTLY with customers/general public/non-industry people, you should never "make due". "Making due" is the ineffectual FA who gives poor service, or is rude, or just surly. Maybe you're having a bad day, maybe it's the last flight of the day, those are both fair issues, we all have them but again you're dealing with someone who isn't in that situation. It's my ONLY flight today, we're both stuck on this plane for 5 hours and you're gonna make that miserable for me? I'll say that 99% of my flights are positive experiences, I'm fine with a professional flight attendant, I don't need the smiling/joking/quipping WestJet types. I don't mind it once in a while but when you don't share their sense of humor or ridiculous level of positivity then it becomes a bit annoying. But that 1% of flights where the FA is just kind of miserable really sucks. I don't mean to degrade the profession, being a flight attendant isn't like being a barrista, which is just code for coffee server. FA's have many more responsibilities, but at the heart of the job it's customer service. Imagine if a waitress/waiter was just rude and ignoring your table, you wouldn't tip them, but there's no tips for FAs. The flights are also usually much longer than a dinner sitting, plus people can't leave, so it just feels longer and there's nothing a passenger can do. So now we're both miserable. Point being, I don't think "making due" cuts it. Even if it's fake, FAs should at the very least be pleasant and professional, I don't think that's asking much, it doesn't need to be over the top, it doesn't need to be extra attentive, smiley, jokey service. But "making due" is what leads to all the posts about poor flight attendants.