I AM CANADIAN! (Having fun with the OTHER Americans!)

If you ask anyone from Canada what their nationality is, they would most likely say that they are American...  How can this be true...  They don't even live in America? 

They don't live in the United States, BUT they do live in North America, thus they are Americans.  They also quickly point out that they are nothing like those of us from the States.  They like to point out that Canada is completely different from the U.S.  Other than our T.V. shows, cartoons, the Gap, Banana Republic, Mc Donalds, Sears, Walmart, KMart, Starbucks, Burgar King, KFC, ect...  Canada is quite different from the U.S.

The few cities that I have been to in Canada, (Ottowa, Toronto,ect), have an European flair and flavour this is lacking here in the States.  Then there is Montreal.  That city is in a catagory all on its own.  Montreal is NOTHING like the rest of Canada, and the people there pride themselves on being that way.  With their own French dialect (le Quebecqois), and heavy European influence, being on Montreal feels almost like someone dropped you off in a lost section of France, that was stuck in the middle of North America.  In spite of the Anti- U.S. sentiment shared by most of the residents of Montreal, I have to say that it is one of my favourite cities that I have visited thus far.  Having had the oppourtunity to spend some time with an aquaintence who was born in raised in Montreal, I was able to see Canada, and Montreal.  Not from the view point of an outsider, but to be immersed in his culture, which was so unlike my own.  Canada and its people are so much more than funny hats and accents, hockey fiends, maple leaves, pountine and steamies, lumber jacks and moose.

Being a flight attendant, I have had the oppourtunity to interact with people from all over the world.  Though it has all been from the saftey and familiarity of my own homeland.  It wasn't untill I visited Montreal, did I see just how ethnocentric and typically American I really am.  I was in a way the American Stereotype.  No matter how much I tried to hide it, the red white and blue showed right through me.

SOOOO sorry for the inconvience!

Have we become so complacent that we are more worried about missing choir practice, or our favourite show, rather than making it to our destination safely?

This past week, I was working a flight from Chicago to Champaign, IL.  Normally it's about a 28 minute flight at the most.  Pretty painless right?  Well not this day...  We had just taken off from O'Hare and were climbing to our short cruising altitude, when my flight crew expearienced a malfuntion in one of the indicators that tells them how much fuel we have on board the airplane.  Thus, just to be safe, we had to turn around and go back to Chicago to have the aircraft checked out.  Without knowing how much fuel we had on board, or if it was LEAKING, the safe thing to do was to turn around.  My crew called me briefly to tell me the situation, and that we were going to be having a normal landing back at O'Hare.  This was the LAST thing that I wanted to hear, because I knew that my day was going to be even LONGER than it already was.  AS we got closer to O'Hare, my captain made an announcement to the passengers telling them what was happening, and that we were turning around.  That was then that the complaints starting coming my way...

"WHY can't we just go to Champaign, don't we HAVE enough gas to get there?"

"I CAN'T believe this!"

"What's going to happen NOW?"

Most everyone was more upset that we were going to be late, rather than the fact that it's better to get some place safely than not at all, because we crashed due to a potential fuel leak!  It turned out that there was nothing seriously wrong with the aircraft, and as soon as we were checked off, we went on our merry way back to CMI!

Where have all the Please and Thank-yous gone?

I have been a flying cocktail waitress for almost 4 years now, and the one thing that I have noticed is that people are becomming increasingly impolite every day! 

So rarely do I hear a please and or thank-you, that I almost taken aback if someone says it to me.  With the onset of cell phones, pagers, PDAs, MP3 players, lap tops, Blackberries, CD players,and every other gadget under the sun, our society has become so completely self-absorbed that noone aknowleges the humanity beyond the tip of their nose.  Face to face conversation is fast becomming replaced with, voice mail, e-mail, and instant messaging.  Americans have become so conditioned to look at a computer screen, that everything and everyone else around us has faded into the background.

Contrairy to popular belief, my PRIMARY job is to save your ass, not kiss it.  If the plane goes down in a crash, it's the flight attendants job to pull you out of the buring airplane, not your laptop or cell phone.  I don't know about the rest of you, but I would be extremely polite and courtious to the one person who could shock my heart, if it were to stop beating, instead of yelling at her because she's out of Diet Coke!

So do me a favour, the next time your on an airplane, instead of just barking out your usual, coffee... BLACK, orange juice... no ice, water... with just ONE ice cube, don't forget to add a please and thank you.  Because heaven forbid, you should ever have to see what I was really trained to do!  And I would hate to have to leave your ass behind, because I couldn't risk my safety to pull your lazy ass out of my plane!

Stupid things that Passengers say....

During my career as a flight attendant, I have encountered many interesting people, with just as many interesting questions and or comments.  I have compiled this list of my most memorable conversations:

1.  This one was one of my favourite pick up lines of all time.  During my beverage service a cute male passenger asked me: "Do you fly much?"  "Excuse me?"  I asked.  "Do you fly much?"  He asked again.  I was stunned, I didn't know how to respond at first so I simply said, "Yea, do YOU?"  I must have embarassed him, because his face turned beet red when he said, "Yea, mostly for work though."  "What a coincidence, so do I!" I retorted.  He then replied, "I know, I know... it was a bad one!"  "It's not that, it's just that you have to remember that I have EVERYTHING, at least about 5 times already today...  I'll tell you what you're pretty cute, I'll come back later, and you can try again!"  I replied.   The poor guy was so mortified that he wouldn't look at me for the rest of the flight!

2.  This one is the usual among the mullet set:  "Hi, Sir, what can I get for you?" I ask.  "How about your number?"  Mullet boy usually replies.  "I'm sorry sir, I'm fresh out of those, how about a coke instead?"  I shoot back.  I get one of these a day usually.

3.  "My you have pretty eyes, are they yours?"  A passenger asked.  "No actually, I am borrowing them from a friend!" I replied

The next questions I get asked on every flight!

"Do you come to <insert city here> often?"

"BUT I want the WHOLE CAN!"

"Do you have a blanket?"

"When are we going to get there?"

"Can I get some more <insert drink here> when you get a chance?"

"But it fit on the LAST AIRPLANE!!!!!"

"Am I going to make my connection?"

"Can you call ahead and have them hold my plane for me?"

"How come you don't make funny PA's like they do at Southwest?"

This is only a small sample of the quirkiness that I expearience at 35,000 feet.  If you have any stories that you would like to share, please feel free to add your comments...