Steven Slater Has my Respect

By now you have probably heard of him. If you haven't then you aren't on the internet enough. I'll offer an extremely brief summary. Steven Slater, 38 years old was a flight attendant. After getting in an argument with a passenger who was trying to access the overhead bin before they came to a complete stop on the tarmac, Slater finally hit his breaking point and yelled some brief statements over the intercom. He grabbed a beer before he deployed the emergency chute slide and slid out and drove home.

I respect him because once again I was flying and once again humanity proved how fucking stupid it is. At this point being a flight attendant is a thankless job. No one ever listens to them and it pisses me off. "Please power down all electronic devices while we take off/land." This isn't that hard of an instruction to follow. You don't have to be on your laptop, ipod, iphone, blackberry, ipad, or whatever every waking minute. Guess what douchebag, when they ask everyone that doesn't mean everyone BUT you. But there you go again. I was sitting next to a dude who was like that on one leg of my trip. Just listen to them and do what they tell you to. It isn't fucking hard.

Then you have the morons who don't fucking stow the second bag they brought on as a carry on under their seat. I love that you put your roll on bag and your purse up top so now I can't throw my shit up above my seat and instead have to place it at the end of the plane.

I hate the people who request something right away. Just fucking wait 20 minutes before you start asking someone for a diet coke.

Fuck you dude who starts rolling his eyes once the baby on board starts crying as we take off.

My flight back to Los Angeles had on particular lady though who is clearly a genius. We've been sitting in our seats for around 15 or so minutes. They have finally sealed the doors and are preparing to take off. We have to taxi a bit to our appropriate lane so we can finally take off and right as the pilots announce over the PA, "Flight attendants prepare for take off." THAT IS THE MOMENT YOU DECIDE TO STAND UP TO RETRIEVE SOMETHING OUT OF THE OVERHEAD BIN?!?! You are dumb. Immediately a stewardess jumps on the PA and announces, "Mam you have to sit down we cannot take off with you standing." She doesn't even react as she rummages through her purse. She has a kid that was sitting on her lap too so when she stood up the kid was just chilling in the aisle. If the pilots had gunned it right as she was doing this she definitely would have fallen on her dumbass face and probably crushed her kid.

She decides to create a sequel of this event as we land. Immediately upon landing she decides to stand up and start taking her shit from the overhead bin even though we literally just landed and are still taxiing. She ignored the announcement evidently about having to stay in your seat until we come to a complete stop.


The reality of the world is people have ridiculously unrealistic expectations when it comes to customer service. Airplanes and restaurants probably have it the worst in those expectations. Now I am all for good service and it makes me happy when I am treated particularly well. But it certainly annoys me when people act extremely indignant about the fact that they aren't getting refills fast enough at Applebee's or some dumb shit like that. There is a kernel of truth in you get what you pay for. If you're going to a greasy spoon or something don't get bent out of shape if they aren't dropping rose petals on the floors that you walk on.

Ultimately I just hate most people because unlike MY AWESOME PERFECT SELF, most people are assholes who don't treat people with a modicum or respect.