RACHEL'S COLUMNS
These articles appeared in Rachel's column every Friday in the A3 section of The Age
When a little attitude causes a lot of turbulence
17th September 2004
"Fly me to the moon and let me play amongst the stars", but please don't speak to me in a wipe-your-nose-bubby voice or make me put up the tray, stuff my belongings into the overhead compartment and fasten my safety belt. The last thing you need when you're in the air is attitude from the flight attendants. Flying is scarifying enough, for starters you leave from a terminal, what is that telling you? But the anxiety starts long before you step through the metal detector. I know that airlines want us to make our bookings on the internet because every time I've tried to make a phone booking recently I end up speaking to a dweeb with built-in phone rage.
OK, maybe I'm asking too many questions about alternative schedules and fares, but isn't customer service part of the job description? One troll I spoke to this week sounded as though she' d been on the liver-cleansing diet for three years – the toxicity was palpable. Once I'd made the booking I threw the phone into a hazardous chemicals bin for fear of contamination.
The airport is where the real fun starts. I'm regularly stopped at the screening point because the guys in uniform want to make sure my eyelash curler can't be used to hijack the aircraft. Too much curl could interfere with their navigation devices. I'm always the chosen one when it comes to random explosive trace detection – why not do that just after I've finished making the phone booking? But to date I haven't had the 'pat-down' inspection. You can bet your nail scissors I'll be sharing that with you when it happens.
I understand that the safety and security of aircraft and passengers is vital, but why not make it fun? Let's have the security staff dressed as Elvis impersonators in white jump suits and sunglasses miming to the soundtrack of She's the Devil in Disguise or Suspicious Minds. Much better than the current bleak experience which only makes me cranky and gets worse when I find myself scrunched between the grumpy carpet-underlay salesman on my left and the over-excited, nail biting, teenager on my right. Mr. Grumpy, snorts, hisses and oozes over the edge like a smoldering volcano, while mademoiselle primps, pouts and naively makes "goo-goo" eyes at the male flight-attendant. I squint and curl my lip at an imaginary pungent odor, when Goebels in a skirt says, "Could you put your belt on please and place your bag under the seat in front of you or in the overhead locker".
Right away I have a hostile response. I don't know what it is but there's a particular tone of authority that instantly gives me a rash and leads me down paths of aggression that not even a Melways could steer me out of. When we're all seated, belted and behaving ourselves the spiel begins. "In case of an emergency, the oxygen mask will fall from the unit above your head, just place this over your nose and mouth". Call me dysfunctional, but where else would I place a mask for oxygen? She bleats "and breathe normally". Forget it, if the aircraft was nose-diving into the ocean, I wouldn't be breathing normally, I'd be sucking hard on that thing and trying to snatch everyone else's mask as well.
What does it mean exactly when they announce mild turbulence? Should I investigate the paper bag in the seat pocket? Novel choice – I can throw up or send my Kodak film away for developing! Predictably the food arrives during the mild turbulence and here begins another odyssey. Ulysses only had the Sirens to deal with; I have an entire tray of food packaged in an impenetrable, Chernobyl-dust-like plastic. Everything is in cute bite-size portions designed to shred your gums while trying to open the packet and stop your body from hurling itself uncontrollably at the person next to you.
I try to sleep but predictably there's a creepy child called Lachlan running amok, head-banging into passengers just as they're nodding off. Finally we're descending, "Sit up straight and put up the tray." I don't want to put up the tray! What's the problem is it blocking the pilot's rear-view vision mirror?
