Memoirs from the Orange Army

"Be Careful It's Hot"

*** AUTHORS NOTE *** Hey everyone, it's me again. I've actually started this chapter earlier than I said I would. I have so many things swimming round my grey matter that I have to start writing them down. Pass me the pen!! - Joey S x

At easyJet, we truly love our customers and as a company, we are trying to constantly improve our services to give a better experience each time. There are times however, where our customers make it difficult to love them which brings you to this chapter. On a regular basis, the crew hear or receive a multitude of comments which are mostly ordinary. There are a select few however, who provide the most ridiculous suggestions or comments which leave us flabbergasted, exasperated or simply stifling giggles in the best attempt to remain professional. This chapter brings you a small collection of my personal favourites.

I'm going to start with one of my earliest memoirs. It was a request asked by an elderly lady on a flight to Barcelona. She was travelling with her husband and both were fairly elderly. During the chaos of boarding, her husband had tripped over in the terminal claiming the terminal seating had moved despite his wife telling us he had tripped over his own feet. The elderly gentleman had cut his shin and rather than request assistance at the gate where the incident happened, he continued to board the aircraft where he asked for a plaster. The gentleman was treated quickly and easily at his seat but the main thing was to ascertain what had happened and to take a few details from the couple. Once inflight, the elderly lady got up and came to the front where I was busy writing up a checklist. "Excuse me sir" she said "can you pop into the cockpit and get these details photocopied?". I almost choked trying to contain my laughter whilst explaining that we did not have such capabilities inside the flight deck.

Its a very common occurrence where the crew can be quite mischievous. We quite often play games or tricks on each other or even on our passengers. I can remember on one particular flight, the captain and his first officer (co-pilot) had been challenged by the crew to include funny words into their mid-flight PA's. The results were incredibly satisfying as the captain began to bleat out their PA -
"Attention from the flight deck this captain Bruce Wayne"

"We have just flown over the hippocropapig region of Italy where the small town is on your left"

"We still have around 40 minutes on the flight so thanks for choosing to fly with easyPeasy and we hope to see you again soon, preferably on the ground"

It wasn't long after the Germanwings tragedy at the Alps (approximately two weeks) when a captain was due to conduct the mid-flight announcement on a flight to Venice. He began the PA by saying - "ladies and gentlemen this is your captain speaking from the flight deck. You'll be glad to know we have made it safely over the Alps". There was a smattering of laughter mixed with nervous looks and many of the passengers clearly had to double-take and process what had just been said. The crew, visibly shocked, smiled like everything was fine but clearly hadn't understood the captains sense of humour.

Our training has had its strange but funny moments too. First aid is a very important subject for us and we are trained in a broad spectrum of ailments, injuries and miscellany. The problem with first aid is the blinding level of health and safety. The overwhelming health and safety haphazard warnings are so obvious they seem stupid. A prime example of this is when we are learning about Choking. The first thing we do to determine and assess on whether a passenger is choking is by asking "are you choking?". Seemingly obvious I would have thought if somebody is choking but health and safety won once again.

Whilst still on the subject of health and safety, there is another haphazard warning that always makes me smile yet feel awkward at the same time. It begins when we start our inflight food service called the Bistro and our passengers will ask for a hot drink such as a simple cup of tea. Before we can even hand it over to them, we are compelled to tell them "be careful, it's hot" like they've never received a cup of tea at any point in their life. There is simply no way to tell them without sounding like a patronising teacher talking to student and yet they sit there and politely accept it. This procedure is in place with good reason as it can protect us and the company from any lawful suits resulting from spilling injuries but it doesn't make it any less awkward.

There are many other awkward situations which is also too familiar in our everyday lives as well as aviation. The service industry altogether has taken a huge backlash in a bid to remain politically correct to avoid any upset, offence or misleading information to customers. Just like health and safety, it now means signs are made to be ridiculously obvious to prevent confusion. A few examples we have onboard usually tend to be like these examples;

Passenger - "can I have a coke?"
Crew - "is Pepsi ok?"

Or there's this;
Passenger - "can I have a gin and tonic with ice and lemon?"
Crew - "we don't serve lemon I'm afraid"
Passenger - " who doesn't have lemon these days?"
Crew - "I can give you an extra napkin?"

There are many times where we all say stupid things at some point, its only natural when we are in unfamiliar surroundings or are distracted by something else. I think one of the best things I heard a passenger say was during a flight to Geneva. It was a middle aged gentleman who had never flown before so was completely unfamiliar with what to do. After pressing his call bell, he said "It's a bit warm on here, how do I open the window?" I then had the painfully slow experience of trying to explain why the windows couldn't possibly open due to the pressure and why we had air vents instead.

Back in the early days of my career I was operating on an early flight to Malaga and we were on the way back when I discovered we had special guest onboard. We had the star of her own television series and discipline extraordinaire Jo Frost who we all affectionately know as Supernanny. I spent the entire flight back talking to the children and telling them if they misbehaved, Supernanny would tell them off and put them on the naughty step as we don't tolerate "unasseptible" behaviour. On top of that, I also discovered Supernanny's kryptonite which has always made me wonder whether she has ever been beaten by children who were unknowing about her secret.

There are many occasions where our heads seem to implode at the lack of logic residing in our passengers. A perfect example is during boarding. Boarding is a highly stressful and chaotic experience with welcome announcements blaring out every few minutes in multiple languages, the pressure of other queueing passengers waiting for you to take your seat whilst quietly tutting and cabin crew squeezing past trying to fulfil the ever-growing demands of the already boarded passengers. To make matters worse, our overhead lockers regularly fill up quickly and our job is to close them when they are filled to signify they is no more space. The problem is that passengers will proceed to walk past three empty lockers and open up an already full one only to be told "sorry sir/madam that's full". The now frustrated passenger will then put it in in the empty locker they had previously walked past and take their allocated seat directly underneath their carry on luggage. Even after so many years, I have never understood the logic or reasoning for this behaviour and probably never will.

Finally, I was once operating a Larnaca flight and on the way back, I noticed a young passenger with his feet dangling over the top of the seat in front of him. I politely asked him to move his feet off the seat explaining it was not polite or respectful to our other passengers or our aircraft in which I got a grunt in reply. He then moved them off the top, opened two tray tables and rested his knees on them. I was visibly annoyed and shocked at the impertinence of this young passenger but still I had to remain professional and politely ask him to refrain from doing that incase he broke the tray tables. He replied saying that he wasn't resting his knees on them despite the fact I could clearly see they were. In an uncontainable explosion of word vomit, I immediately told him "this is not a private jet, this is Easyjet. Get your feet on the floor where they belong". It was this sudden outburst that got the young passenger to snap out of his patronising and vulgar attitude and show a little respect for once.

There are so many more I could mention, I could even write a whole book on the things our passengers say to us. We absolutely appreciate them and despite their sometimes blatant lack of brain power, our passengers certainly never fail to keep our days interesting and varied whilst making us smile and snigger quietly behind the curtains of the galley.

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity" - Dale Carnegie