A recent post mentioned a conversation by an airline crew that I happened to overhear in a restaurant in Brussels. The other anecdote they told one another that amused me was around their employer’s process for ordering uniforms.
Anyone, it seems, can order any uniform – so if you stand at the gate checking boarding passes, but feel like parading in a captain’s garb, go right ahead*.
So, if any of you happen to work for an airline, and decide to bring to life my little fantasy about the whipped stewardess, go right ahead. Just post a comment here when you do.
They did share one story that had me giggling, mind, based on this apparent loophole in their ordering system. One of the captains described boarding a flight the previous week and doing a double-take when seeing one of the stewardesses. Immaculately turned out, from her scarf to her skirt to her stockings.
The captain looked her up and down, and then recognised her from previous trips: “Stuart?” “Good morning, captain,” came the gruff reply.
*The security implications of this are quite sobering, if you stop to think about it.
PS the most senior of the group proceeded to tell tale of a young, newly-qualified pilot who’d annoyed him immensely in the cockpit during a recent flight. “I’m ‘Captain’, or ‘Captain, sir’, or ‘sir'”, the senior office explained. “I don’t take kindly to ‘Captain, dude’.”
I don’t suppose he would have liked the movie, ‘Hey, dude, where’s my car?’ either. It lives on, and on, in this household with the line that comes from the scene when they try to get Chinese takeaway – “And then?”. “And then?” “And then?”…..Oh yes, the Captain would not have appreciated it at all.
I call my husband “dude” sometimes – forgive me my non-native English speaker inability to understand certain subtleties of connotations, and he doesn’t favor it at all.
heh – during the formal moot in my second year at univeristy I lost ten points for absent-mindedly addressing the judge as ‘man’ (rather than the ‘my lord’ he seemed to think necessary).
Given that I barely knew what I was talking about in any event, those were ten points I could ill afford! I am much more mindful of my terms of address these days.
There was along ago Court case over a stewardess bein gcaned by the Captian for not being seated at landing time, as required in Regulations.
It foundered over some evidence by her flat mate, something to do with ambigities over the colourn of her knickers when she displsyed her weals.
Canot remember the period, at least 30 years ago, butn I swear its true. or at least that the news items apeared.