So You Want To Be A Stewardess

How many peanuts in a packet of inflight peanuts?

A chief steward once told me that when he first started flying, he forgot to thaw the ice cream. Back then, he said, the ice cream was brought on board as a large frozen ball. You had to time the thaw just right so it could be served immediately after dinner, at the perfect consistency.

But that one time, he'd completely forgotten to thaw it. His then chief got so mad that he grabbed the ice ball and flung it right out on the aisle like a bowling ball, and made him run after it. "Go explain to the passengers why they don't have dessert," he recounted, still shuddering at the memory.

Experiences like these are what we call 'getting zapped'. He was zapped by his chief. Zapping ranges from a sharp word to total humiliation, and it is a systemic part of crew culture.

This cruelty often rears its ugly head during our individual inflight assessments. These are performance reviews, conducted on random flights. One of the senior crew, usually the IC in your zone does it.

I've heard stories passed along like horror myths, of ultimate zappers, who marked crew down disastrously for not knowing how many peanuts there were in a packet, or how many windows there were on a plane. They called this a lack of product knowledge. 

Which is why I know a packet of inflight peanuts has 23 peanuts. 

Personally, I was never tested on this. In fact, one time, I had the good fortune to be assessed by someone who asked me absolutely nothing about my product knowledge.

He was the IFS* (inflight supervisor) on that flight, i.e. the top of the cabin crew food chain. Now, the IFS works first class, and depending on how hands on they like to be, you either never saw them in economy, or they came down to serve alongside you in the trenches when you had a full load. The IFS on this particular flight was the former type.

After the meal service rush, one of the crew told me to go see him. When I entered the first class cabin, the IFS was lounging on the crew seat, looking bored. He stared at me as if I were a stranger, an unwelcome stranger at that.

Awkwardly, I cleared my throat and said, "Sir, you asked to see me?" He looked at my name tag, then it clicked, and he gestured for me to sit down across from him.

I did. Our knees almost touched; that's how loungey he was. I scooted back in my seat as far as I could go, and angled my legs sideways.

He rummaged in his briefcase and took out a blank assessment form. I'd guessed it - why else would he ask to see me? - so I promptly fixed a smile on my face. He scrutinised me, sizing me up.

Then abruptly, he said, "I've been doing this for 30 years. I've worked with thousands of crew. I can tell your character in the first 3 seconds, I know people better than they know themselves."

... Right. I nodded, confused, not knowing what to say. Did he want me to... praise him?

As I stayed silent, apparently not giving him whatever he was after, he suddenly sneered, "You know who you are? I'll tell you. You're not cut out for this."

... What?

And then he just kept going, his voice soft and spiteful, a cascade of poisonous words.

"You're not good at this." "The crew don't like you." "You don't have the right look." "I've been watching the way you work."

It was the oddest experience. On one hand, I realised -- he was trying to shame me, crush my self-esteem. I don't know why. Maybe because I hadn't been impressed by his self-flattery.

But on the other hand, for someone who was a self-professed know-it-all, well, he didn't know me very well, did he? He was doing a terrible job of tearing me down.

I mean, I knew he hadn't 'seen the way I worked' because he'd been hiding here the whole time. As for saying I didn't have the right look, was he calling me ugly? What kind of leader said stuff like that? Also, had he looked in the mirror? His barbs fell like useless arrows, completely missing their target.

"Do you hear what I'm saying?" he kept repeating, wanting to get a rise out of me. I kept the blank smile on my face, numb with disbelief.

Finally, he concluded that I was no fun. He waved his hand, dismissing me. So that was it, my inflight assessment. I don't know what score he gave me, but there were no repercussions.

It's hard to wrap my head around this zapping business, because cabin crew are selected primarily for our inclination to be nice to people. But somewhere along the way, some of us mutate into bullies. Perhaps it's the power of moving up to a different rank, perhaps it's the overload of passengers' negativity that we've absorbed, but I think it's culture, and culture can be hard to change, no matter how sadistic it is. The mutation is real.

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* The ranks for SIA cabin crew go upwards from Flight Stewardess/Steward, to Leading Stewardess/Steward, Chief Stewardess/Steward and at the very top, the IFS.