Goliath kicks the little guy

What does it take to get people to understand that some of us actually do work long, tiring hours for the salaries that we earn? Let me explain, and please bear with me on this.

Today, my day started at 4:30 a.m. mountain time. That’s what time my alarm went off. I got up, got dressed and went to work, just like many of you do daily. I got to the airport, checked my employee mailbox, signed into the company computer, checked my schedule, my e-mail and printed out my briefing reports. It’s now 7:15 a.m. I’ve been at the office for an hour.

I am required to be at briefing 75 minutes prior to departure time. We are scheduled to depart at 8:45 so my briefing starts at 7:30. My crew boards the airplane, we do our required safety checks and prepare for passenger boarding. Boarding starts at 8:05. The passengers board, get settled in, while the crew assists in helping to find seats, find open overhead bin space for carry-on bags, and for the first class passengers, are offered pre-departure beverages while their coats are hung up in the closets. During all this time, the crew is also busy preparing the galleys for the assigned services for that particular flight, whether it be a simple beverage service, or an all-out meal service.

It’s now 8:45 and the door is closed by the customer service representative. Since I consider the airplane part of being at the office, I can safely say that I have now been at work for two hours and thirty minutes. The pilots release the brakes on the airplane. The moment that happens, my “time card” is punched and I am now officially “on the clock.” Hard to believe? Wait, it gets better!

I am scheduled to work three flights today. We fly from Denver to Los Angeles My passengers are still on board, and my crew mates and I wait for them to get up from their seats, gather their belongings and exit the airplane. We arrived 11 minutes early, so the wheelchair that was ordered was not waiting for our passenger who requested it, so we must stay aboard with them until the wheelchair arrives. 17 minutes later, they show up, and the passenger is rolled away, as the crew leaves the aircraft and begins a layover that should only have been 2 hours and 30 minutes in length.

We arrive at the next flight’s gate, our flight to San Francisco, only to be told that the inbound aircraft is late, AND the captain of our next flight is refusing to take this plane until maintenance fixes a couple of deferred items that have not been addressed. This causes a further delay, so much so that those passengers on our scheduled flight are now reaccomodated on the next flight to SFO and they depart well before our flight does.

After a four and a half hour sit, we are finally given clearance to depart, with no passengers onboard, which is known as a “ferry flight” so that the equipment can be moved to the next city where it is expected. The brakes are released, and again we are “on the clock.” The flight lasts an hour and twenty-one minutes, the brakes are set at the gate at SFO and we are again “off the clock.”

We are then told that our aircraft that we will take to Portland is delayed in its arrival from Chicago due to a mechanical issue it was dealing with at ORD.

After another 94 minute sit in San Francisco, we board the next flight, doing everything that I explained earlier, since this is what we do on every flight, and with the brakes released again, we return to the time clock. We arrive in Portland one hour and forty minutes later and the brakes are set at 6:40 p.m. pacific time. With briefing times included, our DUTY day was just under 13 hours. How many hours did we get paid for? A grand total of: 5 hours and 22 minutes!

I divulge this bit of information to respond to a passenger on my SFO-PDX flight today who had the audacity to tell me and my crew mates that flight attendants make WAY too much money and are highly overpaid for the work that they do! This man was an EXECUTIVE at Hewlett-Packard. While he wouldn’t reveal what his salary was, he felt that crew members were not worth the salaries that they were earning.

Now, I am certainly no brain surgeon, nor do I aspire to become one. I am not a high-powered executive, or a power-broker in business. And I know some of you may consider what I have said regarding what I actually got paid today to be completely insane. But the fact of the matter is, at today’s market values, flying on an airline has never been cheaper!!! In the past 25 years, gasoline, bread, cars, houses, clothing, groceries, dairy…have ALL increased in price. I can remember how shocked everyone was when gasoline jumped over the ONE DOLLAR mark. That was in 1984. What was the average airline ticket price for a flight between Los Angeles and New York City in 1984? $560 for a coach ticket.

Today, gasoline has leveled off at a national average of $2.20/gallon, although it had gone as high as $3.10/gallon in the summer of 2006. Today, the average coach ticket between Los Angeles and New York City? $387.00! These numbers are found in various consumer watchdog groups’ websites.

To be fair, I know that this man doesn’t understand how our workgroup gets compensated for our livelihood. It’s a complicated formula that has been worked out based on years of contract negotiations between the airlines and the unions. And sometimes, even I don’t understand all the dynamics.

All that being said, subtract from it the 33% pay cuts that were forced upon us when the airline went bankrupt – how many of YOU could survive with only 2/3’s of your current salary? Many of us had to sell our homes, move to different cities, or just find new jobs or second jobs to make ends meet.

But to be someone in the upper echelons of the business community and have the audacity to make such inflammatory comments to working class, service industry employees is sheer discourtesy and disrespect. There is no doubt that this man makes a very comfortable living. He is a very well-traveled man, but his sense of fairness is off kilter.

And he’s not alone. The media is certainly no friend to airline personnel. Every chance they get, they portray us as rude, impatient, and most of the time, OVERPAID. They encourage folks to threaten to complain if they don’t get their way, and give advise on how to get away with “freebies” simply by duping the CSR’s or the flight attendants.

I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it here now. YES, there are people who are CSR’s and flight attendants that really should not be in this position. They are jaded, angry, rude and irreverent. We would love for them to find new careers, believe me – we have to work with them for days at a time – you may only have to deal with them for a 2-3 hour flight and never see them again!

But the majority of us are great people. We love what we do and we do it selflessly and with nary a word of discontent or malice. It would be great to actually have an advocate who could spread the word and correct the misconceptions that we are subjected to. I am probably whining and I am sorry if it appears that way.

But hey, that’s my story…and I’m sticking to it!