This month has been trying enough on my patients... That is untill this morning in Des Moines, where it went over the top.
As I have said many times before, I am not a morning person. Throw in reduced rest on top of that, well.... I am pretty much a walking navy blue zombie. There isn't enough Mountian Dew on the plane that can revive me from this state.
Passenger walks on board my plane this morning and mumbles something about noone taking her ticket. I look down at her boarding pass, and see that she has electronic printed on the bottom. I assumed that she was talking about that, so I said, "You're fine, you have and electronic ticket." Then she sat down.
Come to find out what really happened is that she just walked DOWN the jet bridge while the gate agent's back was turned or something, without him running her boarding pass in the EGR. She was physically on the airplane, but the computer system didn't think that she was. After the gate agents made several calls in the gate area, they took them off of the list, and pulled her bags aside. It would have been caught right away if my #2 flight attendant had counted the passengers correctly rather than just matching the count to what the gate agent had. So up comes the missing passenger from her seat with her boarding passes stating that there was NOONE at the gate, so she just walked down the jet bridge.
The agent takes the stubbs of her boarding pass, and asks her why she JUST went down the jet bridge. She then points to me and said that she told ME, but I did nothing. So now everything is MY fault, and the other flight attendant is NO help because he doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut. So we sit her back down, the agent was going to put her back on the flight in the computer, and have the ramp quickly reload her bags.
After the safety demo, I do my compliance check. I make my way through the plane, and there's the other flight attendant talking to the woman, and she is very upset, demanding my name. Here is my other flight attendant telling the woman over and over again.... "WELL YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE JUST WALKED DOWN THE JET BRIDGE WITHOUT SOMEONE THERE!!!!" Not even listening to the women who was upset that her bags may or may not make it to her destination. Granted it wasn't a very smart move on the woman's part, just walking down a jet bridge, but that's beside the point. Not only NOW is everything MY fault because I allegedly REFUSED to help her when she claimed to have come to me for assistance, now she was pissed off because of what the other flight attendant was telling her, and is threatening to write us up. That is something that I take very seriously regardless of who's right or wrong.
It is now time for us to take our seats for take off, so I was going to have to let this poor woman sit and get more and more angry untill we got up in the air. I knew that I would have to put my fatigue aside and put myself in this woman's shoes and come up with an appology. To put insult to injury after we got in the air, as the other flight attendant was walking forward to the galley to help me get things ready for the beverage service, he informs me that he talked to the woman AGAIN, restating what he had already said! I was livid. I told him not to say another word to her, that I was going to have to undo the dammage that he had already done...
To make a long story short, after we had completed the beverage service, I went back to the woman and kneeled down in front of her, an appologized for not being more alert, and addressing the situation. I also explained that the only excuse that I had for being absent minded was the 4 hours sleep that I was able to get last nite. Being tired shouldn't be an excuse, but it does effect how I am able to handle situations. Suprisingly she accepted my appology, and said that she would be upset if her bags didn't get there when she did. I then told her that she had every right to be concerned and upset. I appologized again, and her face started to soften. Whether or not she will write a complaint letter remains to be seen, but now I have to fill out a report to cover my behind, just in case....
I hope that May will be a better month, at least I will be working with someone else whom works harder than Ido!
