Confessions of a Hostie 3 (2 page)

She must really like this guy.

They say opposites attract. Craig is a tad
shy. As a nine-to-five worker, he is fascinated by our hostie
lifestyles. I doubt he has met someone like Mary-go-round before.
If he is spellbound by Mary's flying stories and behavior, he is
absolutely gob-smacked by the flamboyant antics of Damien, being
loud and gregarious. Damien's partner Stuart is quiet and
unassuming, yet listens intently every time Damien speaks.

'Danielle and I were on a trip to Bangkok,
what, two or three weeks ago?' says Damien.

It was actually a smidgen further back than
that, however it is one of the things we flight attendants struggle
with: the concept of time. I can tell you what I did twelve years
ago in intricate detail, but ask me what I was doing two months ago
and I need to stop and think. Other crew have said the same.

Damien and I had the funniest night out in
Bangkok, but the flight there was no fun at all.

In Damien's words: 'If you look up the
dictionary meaning of the word
hell
you'll find a description of our flight to Thailand.'

I know from experience the dramas that can
play out on an aircraft. One of my worst flights, passenger-wise,
was a trip with Damien to Honolulu. A passenger head-butted Damien,
spreading poor Damien's nose from one side of his face to the
other. Damien does not mention this flight during the party,
although I am positive the story has been retold many times at host
of social gatherings.

On our Bangkok trip we had two separate and
unrelated incidences. Damien is an exceptional storyteller, so when
he tells of the events everybody listens. It was a full flight with
Damien the galley operator at the back of the plane and me working
with him. Just after takeoff he turned on the ovens. While the
meals cooked we set-up carts and looked after the usual requests in
the cabin. One of the company's major frequent flyers was
onboard:

'A gold, triple premium, platinum-wrapped,
diamond-studded, we-must-give-you-everything frequent flyer.'

These are Damien's words, not mine.

'Anyhow, we kissed this guy's butt, racing up
to the front of the plane to serve him the finest red wine a
vintner can make' tells Damien.

Sometimes the most important corporate
clients, including frequent flyers, are not who you would imagine.
This man was middle-aged, casually dressed, and a little rough
around the edges. Damien used more insulting dialogue in his
descriptions, but realistically the man looked and acted just like
a typical passenger - at least initially.

In the galley the crew prepared drinks,
readied carts, and waited for the meals to cook. All of a sudden
thick smoke billowed from one of the middle ovens. The thick smoke
and the smell of electrical burning hit our noses at the same time.
This was major. This was dramatic.

Damien was closest to the oven. He turned it
off, then instinctively, and as per procedure, he turned off the
power to the whole galley. We saw smoke, but no flames. As crew we
are trained to fight fires, implementing basic fire drills. The
first person on the scene, after isolating the power, fights the
fire. The second person acts as a communicator, and the next crew
member becomes a backup firefighter - and so on. I was standing
next to Damien. I became the communicator.

If you're at home and something catches fire
in the kitchen, you turn off the power and fight the fire. The big
difference between a house and a plane is: if you are at home, and
the fire gets out of control, you can always call the fire brigade
and get out of the house. You can't do that at 35,000 feet. You
have to fight the fire and put it out. There are no other
options.

We still had not seen flames, which is
reassuring, however Damien barked 'Get me a fire extinguisher.'

As I pick up the nearest crew phone, one of
the other crew, Phil, grabbed an extinguisher to hand to Damien. I
made an emergency call to the whole crew, including the flight
deck. From where I stood, and with the phone having a long flexible
cable, I could see most things going on. My job was to communicate
clearly and effectively the situation to all crew, particularly the
flight crew; in this case being the captain who has seen the
flashing
oh-this-can't-be-good
button and picked up the phone.

In relaying the story, Damien is animated and
theatrical. In reality it was a lot of smoke and potentially
catastrophic, yet we had everything under control, however the way
Damien tells the story: we were engulfed in toxic fumes and ready
to die.

The first thing I told the captain was we had
thick grey-white smoke pouring from and around an oven and the
smell of something burning - an electrical burning smell. Damien
had switched off the galley power and was about to investigate. I
was very careful not mention the word
fire
. On an aircraft it is the worst case
scenario. Nobody wants to hear the
F
word. Several of the crew from the front of the
aircraft, including the boss, venture down the back to help while I
stayed online with the captain.

I must say that Damien handled the situation
brilliantly. Although the power was turned off, the smoke was still
coming from in and around the oven. Phil had retrieved some
firefighting equipment, including thick fire-retardant gloves and a
fire extinguisher. Damien slipped the gloves on, telling everyone
to stand back as he came in low, as to avoid smoke and possible
flame, to open the oven door, not fully, just enough to see in. The
last thing you want to do if there is a fire is allow extra oxygen
to fuel the flames. Damien knew this.

Not as much smoke came out of the oven as one
might as expect - and thankfully no flames. Most oven fires occur
from the ignition of food (usually oil) or some other item, like
paper, which shouldn't have been in the oven. This was not the case
here.

Damien pulled the oven racks, loaded with
food, from the oven. He threw them on the galley bench. He could
still see smoke oozing from the back of the oven, through the vents
where a fan generates the oven heat. Damien made an instant
decision to fire-off the extinguisher into the back of the oven. I
relayed this information to the captain. Although the captain
agreed, Damien began doing it anyway. He squeezed the trigger,
emptying the whole contents into the oven, with the door only ajar
enough for the extinguisher nozzle to poke in. He then shut the
oven door. The smoke began to dissipate.

Fire extinguisher repellent is toxic. Phil
donned a device called a smoke hood. It is a fireproof headpiece
with its own internal oxygen supply. When a toxic material like a
fire extinguisher has been let off, this is the piece of onboard
equipment you really need. Phil went in, opened the oven door, and
investigated. No flames, no smoke. Phil and Damien checked
surrounding panels, but thanks to the quick response from the crew,
any emergency was diverted. I happily relayed that information to
the captain.

The smoke disappeared. Our relief was
obvious, yet the job was far from done. The smell of burnt
electrical equipment inside an aircraft is not the sort of thing
passengers fearlessly embrace. I once had my kitchen toaster burn
out. It did not catch fire, yet the burnt electrical smell stayed
in my apartment for days. That's what we faced in the cabin.

The onboard manager was fantastic, making a
P.A explaining the situation, reassuring everyone that everything
was under control and safe. The captain did the same. The danger
was averted, although we now had a service issue. This aircraft has
two galleys; a small one at the front and the main galley at the
back. That main galley was now out-of-action and the power won't be
turned back on. Although only cooked for ten minutes (on a 30
minute cycle), the meals in the affected oven would taste like a
toxic dump. With around 300 passengers, and approximately 50
unusable meals and the rest only partially cooked, we had a real
problem. These are 300 passengers impatiently waiting for food and
drinks. The only person at the back of the plane with a drink was
the frequent flyer - only because he visited the front of the plane
to top up his glass, three times at least, even at that early stage
of the flight.

Only an hour into the flight our frequent
flyer was totally oblivious to our firefighting efforts, the
commotion in the galley, the smoke in the cabin, the P.As, and the
rest of the world. Discovering he'd been guzzling wine so quickly
had my alarm bells ringing louder than any emergency smoke alarms
in the aircraft.

Using the business class galley we managed to
cook the salvageable meals, being a slow and laborious task. We
succeeded in feeding most of the masses, somehow making up for the
50 meals we were short. Fortunately several passengers did not eat,
yet we still searched every nook and cranny of the aircraft for the
smallest morsels of food. By the time we had finished, not even a
cracker was to be found in the carts.

Our frequent flyer-wine-gulping-supremo was
one of those who didn't eat. He was probably too busy guzzling red
wine. While we ran between galleys, he snuck under our guard,
helping himself to yet more wine. We were still serving meals over
four hours into the flight when a passenger brings our attention to
a multi-color surprise left near the back toilets.

I think the passenger's words were:
I think someone has been sick at the back
toilets
.

They said '
at
', not '
in
'.

Damien and I investigated. I wish we hadn't.
The report of someone vomiting at the back toilets was a tad
understated - and I am talking about the statement being
understated, not the action. It was all over the toilet door, all
over the wall - and all over the crew jump seat a crew member is to
occupy for takeoff and landing.

Guess whose crew jump seat it was?

Mine.

The culprit was in the closest toilet to my
jump seat. One didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes to see the
red-wine-infused vomit dripping off the outside of the toilet door
to know who the offender was, especially as we could hear him
continuing to throw up inside. The sound of banging and crashing
into the walls and door was another give-away. We then heard water
splashing. It sounded like a shower in there.

As Damien tells the story: 'At least we knew
he was alive. Poor Danielle and I had to clean up the results of
this moron's stupidity, with him on the other side of the door
while we cleaned that door. I could hear him in there - and he must
have heard us. I cleaned the door - and cleaned it damn loudly. I
think I swore even louder.'

It took Damien and me sometime to clean the
area, yet the frequent flyer did not come out. He was either too
embarrassed or too drunk to venture out. Regardless, neither of us
cared by that point. Sometime later we did see the man stagger down
the aisle wearing his drenched shirt, unbuttoned, his glistening
pot-belly leading the way. His pants and clothes were saturated. He
had obviously thrown-up on himself and then taken off all his
clothes in an attempt to wash them; only to put them back on again.
Being revolted, I glanced only fleetingly at the drowned rat,
although I could see his shirt was all screwed up. At some point he
must had attempted to somehow wring it dry - with little
success.

He wobbled past the galley and back to his
seat. He then collapsed in a pool of drenched misery. When Damien
relayed part of the story to the onboard manager it was suggested
we might take a clean blanket and a pair of pajamas to the man.
Three minutes into Damien's monologue about how he and I were on
our hands and knees cleaning up the man's vomit, the boss knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt nothing was ever going past the business
class curtains.

It was early in the evening when we landed in
Bangkok.

Damien said 'Come on - we're going out!'

He took me to a bar in Bangkok's Patpong, the
most famous entertainment and red-light district in the city,
teaming with sex clubs, bars, and markets. I have been to the
markets many times. They are great, but the truth-be-told, I have
seen just one of the sex shows - and that was some years ago.

It's not really my cup of tea.

Damien tells the party-goers about some of
the sex acts performed on stage in Patpong. Very few people can
talk about these demeaning performances, featuring ping-pong balls
and darts, amongst other things, and get away with it in mixed
company. Damien can. Even if he can't, he'll say it anyway.

When Damien first started talking about
Patpong, I thought he was going to tell all my friends we had a
night out in a strip club, which we didn't. Damien has a wicked
sense of humor. In the company of my friends I am a little nervous.
I need not worry as Damien sticks with the facts.

We went to a bar in Patpong with the most
amazing copy-cat singers, impersonating the likes of Tom Jones and
Tina Turner. My personal favorite was a little old skinny Thai man
who really thought he was the incarnation of Elvis Presley. Apart
from the Thai accent and the fact he looked nothing like the real
Elvis, he still sounded pretty good. Damien and I had a fantastic
night, getting back to the hotel in the wee hours of the
morning.

Sleep in our job is so very important, but
nobody recalls with fondness the nights where you went to bed
early.

When Damien talked of partying and sex clubs,
Mary-go-round's ears pricked. She is eager to share her own
stories. Mary has some saucy accounts. I know - I've heard some. To
her credit she shows some decorum around her new beau, only talking
of the one time she danced on a pole at a club in Patpong. I was
not there, although I have no qualms that she would have done it.
There would have been a guy in tow who she was showing-off to, no
doubt. There usually is. I am also sure she has done far more
risqué stunts than pole dancing, but for tonight at least, she
keeps those stories to herself. Many of the stories I have heard
about Mary, from others as well as herself, she has little
recollection. The outrageous things she does are proportionate to
the amount of booze she consumes. Most stories about Mary are
memorable, yet she remembers very few herself.