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Wow, I can't believe it has been over four years since I've last visited this blog - the start of my venture into writing. Am glad to say I haven't returned to flying, as much as I miss the glorious days of being in a different country each week!
However, my writing journey continues and I've recently published a couple of books, one of them inspired by my travels. As you're an audience already familiar with my work, I am now shamelessly plugging these books to you.
Reflections on Travel is a licorice allsorts kind of book in which I reflect on flying, cruising, Thai chillis, Cuban cockroaches..and more! If you're a passionate traveller, armchair traveller or just want a laugh, this book is for you. Click here to purchase.
My other book, 34 Pieces of Wisdom is about embracing being in one's 30s rather than living in triple-decade-related denial. I have 34 pieces of wisdom to share - one for every real birthday I've had so far. To help support a starving artist click here.
One of my new year’s resolutions is to be more positive = complain less. I thought it appropriate then, to discuss the things I appreciated about being a hostie. I wouldn’t, couldn’t, have stuck out the job for all those years without there being some pretty damn good perks.
Essentially hosties paid to travel. The salary didn’t make me a millionairess but it sure was great having a disposable income. Free accommodation is included- and it’s in a hotel. Prior to becoming a hostie, my holiday budget only allowed for stays at hoStels. And on top of that, the airline provides meal allowances for layovers (most of it going towards retail therapy as opposed to meals).
Cheap tickets can be obtained for travel on your own airline, as well as other major carriers, for yourself and immediate family members. These days I balk at the cost of full priced airfares.
Hosties find themselves in different countries/continents within a matter of days, all the time. This was absolutely surreal.
Flying regulations allow hosties to get more days off than people with regular jobs. While I spent most days off recovering from jetlag/ hideous flights, I used the opportunity to go on mini-breaks too. And if I wanted to take trips to favourite work destinations, I could get discounted accommodation at crew hotels.
Who doesn’t love a discount? Hosties get plenty. Discounts are not limited to room service, hotel amenities and restaurants. Hosties are much-valued customers of businesses in the vicinity of the crew hotel, and are offered discounts on treatments like colonic irrigation, varicose vein removal, teeth whitening, botox injections and plastic surgery.
In Bangkok, a hostie can enter a shop selling poorly made imitation brand-name goods visited by ordinary customers, flash an aircrew ID card and exchange a knowing glance with the shopkeeper. The hostie is led out of the shop, down a dirty alleyway, up a dark and dingy staircase, atop of which awaits the ‘secret’ warehouse, allowing the ‘privileged’ guest access to the ‘best quality’ fakes at ‘special’ prices. Well I guess this wasn’t so much a perk for me as I’m not into buying fakes, but I got a good laugh from the overly dramatic experience of it all.
I appreciated how aircrew’s suitcases emerge from the luggage carousel first. In most destinations someone from the airport takes the suitcases off the luggage belt and line them up neatly. Aircrew have their own immigration lane.
Whenever I travelled to Oz as a uniformed crewmember, apart from one occasion where my suitcase was thoroughly searched, the customs people were friendly and easygoing.
Whenever I came home on leave or days off as a passenger, I was always treated nicely by our (male) customs officers who read “flight attendant” listed under “occupation” on my customs form. They were very chatty and eager to know what airline I worked for, and what places I had visited recently. I could see other passengers being hassled and having their luggage ransacked. Perhaps it was pure coincidence.
The opportunity to travel extensively, to work with and serve people of many nationalities, enriched my knowledge and appreciation of different cultures.
Oh, and being away from Oz for so long, each time I returned I learnt to look upon home with renewed appreciation. There truly is no place like home, and this sentiment, strangely enough, was a great thing about being a jetsetter.
In my previous post I wrote about the potential for svelte hosties to morph into heifers. Today I will outline some other occupational hazards associated with the hostie profession.
While some hosties stack on the kilos, others go the opposite extreme and become obsessive about shedding kilos. Although there are plenty of porkers, there is still the expectation and pressure to be thin. The airline industry favours too thin over too fat. My old airline punished hosties they deemed too heavy by delaying promotions until the weight came down. I’ve never heard of a case where anorexic hosties were held back from being promoted for their unhealthy weight. Too many hosties pop pills that have a laxative or hunger suppressing effect.
People who travel are familiar with the havoc it wreaks on the ‘internal plumbing’ system. Being constantly on the move and lack of access to fresh fruit and vege can cause system ‘blockage’. Conversely, eating dodgy food on the plane or in countries with dubious hygiene standards can result in a dose of ‘the runs’. Imagine you spend years flying around and staying in overly exotic places. Sure, this life can be exciting, but it takes a toll on your body.
Hosties are more prone to getting sick than normal civilians. They are surrounded by germs and sick travellers. Also, international travel takes hosties from one extreme climate to the next eg.freezing snowy conditions in Moscow one day, and intense humidity in Bangkok a few days later. The body can’t adjust to severe weather changes in a short time so easily.
That goes for being in different time zones as well. Flying completely screws up the body clock. Hosties sleep, are awake, and eat at odd hours. I was ALWAYS tired, I think I spent the majority of my time as a hostie in a zombie-like state. I could never sleep well before flights that departed very early in the morning, which meant by the time the plane was landing at its destination I was nodding off in my jumpseat. Quite a few aircraft emergency evacuation slides were inadvertently inflated by exhausted hosties in my time (the aircraft door was opened after landing while the slide was in ‘armed’ instead of ‘disarmed’ mode). Thankfully I wasn’t one of those hosties, but I did once hallucinate there was a man in the onboard closet when in reality I was merely looking at a jacket on a coat hanger- I was so deprived of sleep.
Hosties suffer from dehydration. Getting caught up in attending to demanding passengers and answering non-stop call bells mean hosties neglect to keep their bodies hydrated, or sometimes they just forget to drink water. Of course, drinking lots of water presents one with the dilemma of having no choice but to use the aircraft toilets which a) are filthy b) usually have a horrendously long queue.
Not drinking enough water, lack of sleep, a poor diet and constantly being in an air-conditioned environment amount to visible signs of health deterioration, such as eyebags/shadows, bad skin and an overall haggardness, which expensive creams and potions can’t erase. For the vain hostie, this is a most unwelcome part of the job.
Finally, medical studies have shown that continual exposure to radiation damages internal organs in flight crew. My internal organs hadn’t shrivelled up according to my last medical test but my lung capacity had decreased and my heart rate was abnormally fast. I think I should be concerned…
TomN (of Boat Heaven blog fame) recently addressed some issues that had been weighing on his mind. Throughout his years of air travel he made the observation that international hosties were generally pieces of “eye candy”, while our homegrown hosties had perhaps consumed too much candy and were “big heifers”.
I too noticed the beauty of European hosties, who all appear to have just stepped out of a hair salon, had their face made up by a professional makeup artist, and exude the glamour of models strutting their stuff on a Milanese catwalk even as they are walking through the cabin collecting rubbish
[ Click here to read more ]
Rumours. No workplace would be complete without them. I heard some very interesting ones in my hostie days. Although the narrators of these rumours would recount their tales with the utmost conviction, I was never too sure whether to believe them or not.
My favourite story involves a disgruntled hostie seeking vengeance on a cabin manager she had a run-in with. I don’t know the particulars of the incident that provoked this act of retribution, but clearly the hostie was angry. The hostie placed a note saying, “have a shitty day” in the cabin manager’s company mailbox, along with a pile of excrement to emphasise her message. Totally vulgar, yet this gem of a story left me in hysterics. My source of information was reliable, making this rumour likely to be true
[ Click here to read more ]
Cost cutting. It’s what companies the world over are doing these days. And it was very evident in my recent domestic flying experience. First there was mandatory self check-in. Then the inflight ‘service’ consisted of hosties dashing through the cabin with a cart filled with purchasable food and drinks. And if one wanted to be entertained, purchasable headsets were available to tune in to what I assume was elevator music.
As I was observing the cost cutting measures of my local airline, I reflected on my ex-airline and their particular methods of economising. My old airline had a different approach. Passengers were always given an abundance of free food and drink, in fact the airline had aptly been nicknamed the ‘flying restaurant’. Rather, I feel it was the hosties that suffered more in the name of cost cutting
[ Click here to read more ]
I was left terribly disappointed after my recent flight to Melbourne. It had nothing to do with the airline's service- I only expected to arrive to my destination in one piece travelling on a budget carrier- disappointment arose from the fact that my flight was uneventful, a complete snoozefest equal to watching cricket or ‘The English Patient’.
No offence to my travel companion- after the initial amusement of us belting out the chorus from ‘Memories’ as I was reminded of a previous life upon observing the hosties going about their pre-takeoff duties- I was utterly bored. So much for getting some interesting material for my blog
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I’m getting on a plane tomorrow. I’m looking forward to my mini-break (from doing nothing) to Melbourne, I only wish I didn’t have to fly on a germ-infested metal tube to get there. And worst of all, I have to pack. Even though I lived out of a suitcase for all those years, packing for trips was always a huge headache. Unfortunately, there’s no secret formula for successful packing. Everyone has their own system, and amongst hosties I have observed the following types of suitcase packers:
*The obsessive packer arranges, and then rearranges, the contents of their suitcase as early as possible before the flight, according to a carefully devised list. The need to be prepared for all social situations, weather conditions and ailments, places them in a constant state of anxiety.
*The last minute packer factors in luggage packing time when they set their wake-up alarm, so they can pack just before they have to leave home/ the hotel. I preferred to get the extra shut-eye
[ Click here to read more ]
Hosties are impossible to please (much like passengers). They complain when it’s too busy and the call bells are ringing non-stop, and they complain when there’s nothing to do and they are going insane from boredom. I preferred boredom to busyness! Here are some ways hosties kill boredom on flights…
*By far THE most popular way to past time is to bitch about the job and the company. I realise my blog is essentially dedicated to saying unpleasant things about the industry, but believe it or not, I was a very professional hostie (whinging only to friends, family, flatmates, and now to you dear strangers
[ Click here to read more ]
There’s a hostie friend of mine who I hesitate to ask ‘how are you?’ for fear of the lengthy and over revealing answer. The response is never just “I’m fine”. If all I have to hear from her is “I’ve got a very snotty nose at the moment” that would be a lucky escape for me. But more often than not, this friend will launch into details about the colour and consistency of the mucous. This information will be followed by yet another equally descriptive statement about her bowel movements (or lack of).
Sometimes there’s such a thing as TMI (Too Much Information). And alongside hairdressers, cabbies and The British, hosties are very willing imparters of personal information
[ Click here to read more ]
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Comment by Judy
on Perks of the job
Ex-Hostie