xox

Had a big tiff with the FA (the service manager on the flight) from MUC-EWR yesterday ... my wife never eats on planes, but she always wants to get the meal (she always wants to be sure we get what we pay for) and offer it to me ... this has never been a problem ... so I told the FA she was not going to eat but that I probably would eat part of her meal ... so she brought by the appetizer (two shrimp) and offered it to me but not a second one ... when she came by again my wife said she would like to be served ... the FA blew up and started yelling at us "So you've changed your mind, are you going to eat now? Your husband said you weren't going to eat ...". My wife said "I just want to be served." The FA kept yelling "But are you going to eat now?" She just kept yelling at us implying that unless my wife agreed to eat, she would not serve her food. We both were kind of stunned and I decided (since I couldn't walk out of the restaurant) to just not eat either.

Neither of us ever raised our voices but she kept yelling. Earlier she had been rude to a visibly upset passenger in front of us whose seat would not fully recline.

I spoke later to a different FA and asked "Is there some rule that you have to eat what you are served, or that you have to agree to eat what you are served?" "Is there a rule that you can't share your meal with your spouse?" "Didn't we buy two meals when we bought these seats?" The FA apologized, said the other one was a little overstressed, etc. etc.

It is inconceivable to me that we would have had this sort of incident on an Asian carrier. (On the other hand, we had delightful United FAs on the outbound flights, and my wife even exchanged email addresses with one of them.)