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Prepare for Impact: How I Use My Flight Attendant Skills to Make a Plan B, C and D

Rear view of flight attendant indicating exits to passengers in airplane

Recently my iPhone took a trip to the inside of a toilet. I tell you this because of how, I came to realize, my “flight attendant mode” came out to handle it. I wouldn’t call myself an overly organized person, but I do all right in that category. You cannot be crew and not have some strong areas of organizational discipline. We have irregular and often hectic schedules to arrange and keep track of, and the most essential parts of our job are all about preparing and practicing for all sorts of things that can go wrong in a day’s work. If you’re a commuter, as I am, add on the fact that contingencies run our lives.

This is why I might not ever know what day of the week it is:

Yet I did have a First Aid kit just for drowned phones ready in case it ever happened: I only had to slip my phone in the baggie full of silica gel packs I had been ferreting away since our last house move, kept in a Tupperware container laid ready in the driest place in our house. I was strict about leaving it to dry for three days.

I was mostly comfortable in my phoneless phase. It did, of course, remind me of some of the feats we used to pull off regularly without them. Like the time my sister and I went to Sicily. I came from Chicago, she from Germany. We planned to meet at the Palermo airport by midnight. The “plan” was absurdly simple, but we felt fine about it — and it worked! How did we have the confidence for such crazy things without cell phones? We had backup plans, of course — as I learned at work. “If … then, if … then, if … then,” followed by the confidence you’ve prepared as best you can. It’s the essence of all our airline training, and it has crept into the rest of my life: always have a Plan B. And C. And maybe a D.

So when a friend and I made plans to meet during my phoneless phase — her picking me up at the nearest town’s train station, I emailed her the backup strategy just before. “If I don’t see you when I arrive, I’ll be waiting [at this spot].” Then, “If you don’t arrive in 15 minutes, stay home and I’ll walk to your house. I’ve got the route mapped and printed just in case.” I was taking into consideration the fact that she has small kids — the ultimate schedule sabotage, I figured.

When I saw her, she greeted me with, “My husband and I have been laughing at you. Clearly the pregnancy hormones have gotten to your head!”

I probably did look a little silly, but nothing new there. She’d just never seen my fight attendant come out. I’m not sure she knows I have 8,000 pens on me, I never set fewer than three alarms, I never leave the house without snacks in my pocket, and I carry a tool box (duct tape, maxi pads and uniform wings — seriously, they can fix almost anything). Sure I’m a bit naturally weird, but I got all those habits from my job.

If you’re wondering whether my preparedness saved the phone, it did — mostly. The “home” button is kaput. Siri seems to think I talk to him in the middle of the night. Heavy damage, but I suppose if it were a work emergency, you could say we “suffered injuries but got everyone out alive.” I might seem simultaneously scattered and overprepared on the ground, but now you know, it’s just my flight attendant coming out. And it works for me. Mostly.

[Photo: Alamy]

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