Scared of Flight Attendants? Become One

By Joel Stein

I don't feel comfortable on airplanes. It's not that I'm afraid of flying; it's that I'm afraid of flight attendants. I don't know how to react to someone who is being paid to be nice to me. I'm also uncomfortable with waiters, masseurs and Scientologists. So every time I'm on a plane, I wish they would just let me get out of my seat and attend to my own in-flight needs. Delta offered to meet me halfway. I could be a flight attendant on an Atlanta--to--Los Angeles trip so long as I completed one day of its 5 1/2-week flight-attendant-training program--and also attended to the needs of everyone else on the plane. I didn't know if I was more surprised that Delta would let me ruin a cross-country flight or that it took 5 1/2 weeks to teach someone to be a flight attendant.

Because struggling airlines haven't hired in a long time and because flight attendants rarely quit--thanks to the limited hours and unlimited free flights they get for themselves and their families--Delta received more than 100,000 applications for 1,200 new $19-an-hour jobs. My fellow future flight attendants weren't at all what I expected, based on my experience with service-sector jobs--which is to say that none were illegal immigrants. Even more shocking, some of them were straight men. One had been laid off from his long-held job as a local-news producer and saw an ad requiring language skills for foreign flights. One woman used to travel to Hooters restaurants to train waitstaff. She, I believe, just wanted to upgrade her wardrobe.

I learned a lot throughout my training day. Specifically, I learned to wake people for meals but not beverage service; that people try to have sex in the bathroom all the time, and it's your job to knock on the door and get them out for their own safety. Also, you can totally ask for the whole can of soda. Thanks to a few hours in a pool next to a plane hull, I now know how to ditch a plane too. People almost never survive a jumbo-jet water landing, but if you didn't put 55 swimsuited future flight attendants in a pool, you would have no chance of pitching a reality show, which I assume must be Delta's long-term business plan.

Right before I was about to work my flight, Delta claimed that regulations prevented me from donning the Richard Tyler--designed Delta uniform. I figured a guy in jeans telling them to bring their seat backs forward would be confusing to passengers, but as soon as I started greeting people, I learned that airline passengers are not in the mood to pay attention to anything. Your flight attendant could wear a burqa, and you wouldn't notice so long as she made your little TV set work.

This became even clearer when Delta made the mistake of letting me work the p.a. system. The airplane p.a., it always seemed from my passenger seat, where I fought the urge to grab it, is the most powerful broadcasting tool in the world. You can interrupt 200 people's entertainment just to announce your thoughts. As soon as I got on it, I made a long speech about my goals as a one-day flight attendant and how we got a 2% commission for selling the Rande Gerber--designed cocktails. I told them that though I hadn't tried Delta's "Mile High Mojito," I was sure it was delicious, since Gerber must have used a fair amount of alcohol to land Cindy Crawford. Cindy Crawford jokes must not work at high altitude.

Once I got on the beverage cart, even my mentor, flight attendant Mark Fields, who had failed me on all my tests throughout the day, said I rocked. Sure, some of my methods were unorthodox, according to FAA regulations, like making a cocktail for myself and drinking it as I went down the aisle, but I think that did a lot for the up-sell. Even my creepy workplace flirting finally found an appropriate context. "I give you a 9.5 out of 10," Fields said. "You didn't just give that woman a blanket; you opened it up and wrapped it around her."

Flights feel much shorter when you're working them, especially since you get to walk around and drink free cocktails. As a passenger, I used to spend my flight ignoring the flight attendants' seat-belt speech and wondering if they had been hot in their 20s; as a flight attendant, I could gossip about passengers and compare restaurants around the world with my co-workers. No one was going to knock on our lavatory door if we didn't want them to.

I was thinking this wasn't a bad life until veteran flight attendant Elaine Elling put it in perspective. "It's very glamorous," she said. "There's no other job where you thank people for their trash." I don't think I made her feel better by reminding her about Fred Sanford.

When I got off the flight, having said bye-bye to the line of uninterested passengers, I felt cured of my discomfort with the passenger--flight attendant relationship. A little eye contact and the speedy dispatch of my garbage are all they're looking for. That and the free flights for everyone they know.

See Joel Fly For video of Stein's stint as a flight attendant, go to time.com/video