Nasty Crew

After reading back my last entry, I thought urgh, how depressing. So no more depressing posts from for the time being, I've more exciting things to look forward to like Sarah's costume birthday party. But I'm not going into that today, I'm here to vent out my anger. Sheesh, first self-pity and now anger, hmm, seems like I've got a lot of negativity going around me right now. Must be the stress of planning a party.

Anyway, hubby got back from flight earlier. He came home fuming away. I've already put both kids for their evening naps so had some leisurely time to sprawl on the sofa and lend a listening ear for sweet, ole hubby. He needed to unload too.

So hubby told me that an incident occured on board. He had a big fight with a stewardess during his flight back. This is how it went.

It was time for his rest period and since there were plenty of vacant seats in the first class, hubby decided to head there for a little shut eye. Hubby had gone to the toilet before he went to his seat. When he was seated, the stewardess in-charge of first class came up to him and rudely said," Excuse me, next time please clean up the toilet after using it" and she turned away and headed back to the galley. Hubby was like, "What the???" And his blood began to boil so he walked to the galley to have a word with that nasty woman.

At the galley, hubby asked her, "What did you say to me just now?" She turned to him and rudely repeated what she had said earlier. Hubby then replied, "Cleaning toilets isn't my job, my job is to fly the aircraft. I thought it's your job to clean toilets." Defensively the nasty stewardess replied, "It's not my job either." Huh? Part of a cabin crew's duty is to ensure passengers' comfort and making an effort to keep the toilets clean is one way of ensuring passengers' comfort. Obviously crazy woman here wasn't paying attention when she was in training school.

It was inevitable that her last statement would be followed by an argument. Hubby asked the stewardess, "Why should I clean the toilets?" She replied, "As a common courtesy to us for choosing to rest in first class and I've already had to clean up the toilet 3 times before you went in."

Ok, hubby practically exploded, "Courtesy?!! Do you know I have every right to rest in first class?!! Do you want to know what courtesy is?! It's us allowing him (hubby pointed towards the Senior Chief Steward who was snoring himself deep into La La Land) to sleep in first class!" At that the stewardess just grew frustrated and screamed back, "Oh just shut up! Fine! Do whatever you want! And while you are at that, go flood the toilet will you!"

And at that, hubby turned to the flight steward who was just standing there gaping and said, "Go and call your Chief Stewardess." The steward who seemed intimidated replied, "...but she's resting." "Call her, NOW!" And the steward scurried away.

When the Chief Stewardess arrived and asked hubby what was the matter, hubby told her. "Your stewardess here interupted my rest period and is being extremely rude. She's being insubordinate." The Chief quickly tried to calm hubby down and told him to continue his rest since he is operating as Team A and must be really tired. Hubby just glared at the defiant stewardess, who by the way glared back. She had the cheek to mutter, " You weren't resting, I saw you playing a game on your PDA." Hubby just continued walking back to the cockpit. In the cockpit, he related this incident to the Captain. The other operating co-pilot got pissed off as well and went down to first class to tell the stewardess off. But when he came back, he said the stewardess has been sent off to work in economy istead. The stewardess never did appologize.

During my days, we had a fair share of rude stewardesses but never a case of insubordination especially when it concerns the technical crews. We've always stuck to the chain of command rule and according to that rule, hubby was second in command.

If I was there, I would have given that stewardess one, tight slap. Not only for the lack of respect she displayed but also for having the cheek to tell hubby to clean toilets. No one tells my man to clean toilets but me. Grr...