This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by psa188@xxxxxxxxx /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com. http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015 \----------------------------------------------------------/ For Flight Attendants, Stress Comes With the Job August 12, 2003 By FRANCINE PARNES First the passenger cursed Mary Sutphen for refusing to serve him another whiskey on the flight from New York to Amsterdam. Then he kicked her in the knee. Then he decided to get her attention by urinating on her jump seat. On arrival, he was met by the local authorities at the aircraft door. "I will never understand what happens to people when they get on an airplane," said Ms. Sutphen, a recently laid-off flight attendant who lives in Manhattan and is hoping to get a call soon to return to work. "Some people check their brains with their bags." You think your business travels have become more stressful? Put yourself in the shoes of flight attendants (and even they sometimes have to take them off for the security guards). The free time they are allotted in cities where they stay overnight has become shorter. The list of security measures they must take, from watching passengers' behavior to checking for unusual bags, has become longer. The travelers they serve have become surlier. And their financial prospects have become bleaker. It used to be that flight attendants' biggest complaints were substandard meals, early wake-up calls and crowded crash-pad apartments. Now, they also have to worry about layoffs, wage and benefit cuts and other job concessions, to say nothing of threats of terrorism and another epidemic like SARS. For many, job security is issue No. 1. About 22 percent of all flight attendants in the United States have been laid off since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, said Pat Friend, international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, a union representing about half the attendants in the United States airline industry. For those still working, even seemingly minor changes can cause a succession of annoyances, says Rene Foss, a flight attendant and author of "Around the World in a Bad Mood: Confessions of a Flight Attendant" (Hyperion, 2002), which details the vexations of the trade. For example, charging for meals invariably prompts grumbling by some passengers. That, in turn, forces Ms. Foss to put on her fake "flight attendant's smile" and thank them for their input, she said. Then, she has to make change for $20 or $50 bills, no small matter in a hectic schedule. "We're working with a minimum crew," Ms. Foss said. "We're not an A.T.M. on wings." Worst of all, the food can run out, forcing her into an unwelcome arbitrator's role. "If there are 200 passengers but only 25 meals, what am I supposed to do if 26 people want to eat?" she asked. "Who gets that last meal, the little old lady, the unaccompanied child or the grumpy businessman? When people are hungry, they're mean." It isn't just free food that passengers are being deprived of these days; all sorts of once-standard perks are being withheld. To deflect complaints, some flight attendants are taking pre-emptive action. "I try to pass it off as if we never had it," said Louis Rudy, a flight attendant from Manhattan. "I divert their attention with a little smile or `let me help you with that.' Maybe they won't notice, and I won't have to explain one more thing." Seasoned business travelers are often the first to notice when the plug is pulled on creature comforts, Mr. Rudy says. "You see in their eyes and mannerisms that something is off," he said. "They make comments like `so-and-so airline still offers hot towels,' as if I have any control over this. In my head, my response is always `well, hooray for them.' " He does understand their complaints, he says, and realizes he is only a convenient target for their frustration over the problems of flying. But that frustration has made many travelers downright unfriendly, further damaging the flight crew's morale. "Often, we arrive with our beverage carts, obviously ready to take their drink order, but the customer will wait until we have asked once or twice before removing their headphones and saying, `What?' " said Robert Ward, a flight attendant in San Francisco. "They're civil under duress. It's a feeling that `I am being nice because I have to be nice, and I'm not going to be any nicer than I have to be.' " Alin Boswell, a US Airways flight attendant based in Washington, has gotten the same cold shoulder. On a flight in May, he said, "I got to row four before I heard a single `please' or `thank you.' I had gone through 13 people." Flight attendants are also acting out their anxieties. Marshal Cohen, a business traveler and market research analyst in Port Washington, N.Y., said he recently realized he had boarded the wrong flight and rushed to the front of the plane at full speed, yelling that the plane must not leave. "The look on the flight attendant's face probably thinking I was running towards him to hijack the plane was something out of a comic book," he said. "He immediately screamed and instinctively grabbed a flashlight as if it would be a weapon or something to protect himself." Like Mr. Cohen, some flight attendants are suddenly figuring out that it is time to get off the plane - for good. Mr. Rudy, the flight attendant from Manhattan, is thinking about switching careers and is already working as a restaurant manager on his nonflight days. "Ask any flight attendant; when we all took this job, it was for the lifestyle, the freedom," said Mr. Rudy, who started in 1986. "But it's changed so much, with mergers and layoffs and concessions and service reductions and waiting for pay cuts. The thrill is gone. It's become," he said, pausing for the right phrase, "such a job." He added: "We have a whole different mindset when we go to work now. We're having security briefings and reinforced doors and air marshals and fewer flight attendants and shorter layovers and longer hours. It's basically a big cattle car." Sharon B. Wingler, a flight attendant for 33 years who runs a Web site, TravelAloneAndLoveIt.com, says that she, like many of her colleagues, is contemplating a Plan B profession. "I just flew with a co-worker who's got at least 20 years with the company," she said. "Now she's taking nursing classes." Of course, the reason most flight attendants are looking into other lines of work is probably less their declining satisfaction with their job than its feared disappearance. The Association of Professional Flight Attendants, the union representing those employees at American Airlines - which has laid off more than 6,000 flight attendants since the terrorist attacks in an effort to avoid filing for bankruptcy protection - said it had had a tenfold increase in the number of "anxious phone calls" from members in the last six months. "They're desperate for guidance," said George Price, a spokesman for the group. However much conditions have deteriorated, many flight attendants still love working at 30,000 feet - or, if they have been laid off, yearn to do so again. Getting a call from her former employer to come back to her old job would be "like oxygen for me," said Ms. Sutphen, the out-of-work flight attendant in New York. "It's kind of masochistic; you just love the lifestyle." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/business/12ATTE.html?ex=1061695547&ei=1&en=17b1f4c7317655a6 --------------------------------- Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like! Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here: http://www.nytimes.com/ads/nytcirc/index.html HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact onlinesales@xxxxxxxxxxx or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to help@xxxxxxxxxxxx Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company