The idea sat in the back of my mind for years, like a box you move from place to place but never unpack. I could be a flight attendant. Technically, I had been one already, in utero when my mom worked as one into her first trimester.
But I pushed the idea away like a kid who doesn’t want to try a new food. I love being outdoors as much as I hate early mornings. My favorite place to be is in the mountains away from people. Most people know these two preferences go against the flight attendant job description.
It wasn’t until I had explored all other job avenues and got accepted to graduate school for mental health counseling that I finally followed the urge to apply. I did it on a whim after seeing an ad from a regional airline on my way to Mexico. Two months later, I landed an in-person interview and got the job offer the same day. It felt right to accept the role over school for reasons only intuition can explain.
Fast forward to two years on the job. Another crewmember and I stood in the first-class galley over a leftover pan of chocolate chip cookies. The trip marked my first time working an international flight, so naturally my crew member brought up the movie View from the Top. In his best Gwyneth Paltrow voice, he mimicked, “Paris. First Class. International,” as he painted the air with his hands. I laughed, crumbs falling out of the corner of my mouth. It was funny because Hollywood and the general public generally have no idea what our jobs actually entail.
He was referencing that scene when Sally Weston (played by Candice Bergman) stands behind Donna Jensen (played by Gwyneth) and has her chant those words in front of the mirror of Sally’s giant closet, reminding Donna to keep her eye on the prize.
As my crew member re-envisioned the movie, I thought about how most of the time I was shoving my lunch down in the back galley, hoping the curtain blocked the smells as the bathroom doors slammed and the toilets swooshed away.
Paris. First Class. International.
At first, the job was manageable. My seniority grew every week at my first base as new people pumped through training thanks to the post-COVID boost in travel. This continued through the fall, and winter flying died down with fewer crowds. Then us junior flight attendants were thrown into the jaws of summer flying. Reroutes, calls at two a.m. to report to the airport in three hours, work every weekend— you experience it all in your first few summers. I felt like a contestant on Survivor, Airplane Edition. When would I drop the proverbial coconut?
Another factor in all of this was that my marriage blew up three days before I planned to leave for several weeks of training, with reasons having nothing to do with the new job. After passing training and transferring to two different bases, I left Seattle and began a strange new existence in which I didn’t recognize my life. My job, marital status, home, and zip code changed in a matter of three days. I wouldn’t have believed it if someone showed me a glimpse of my life six months down the road. It took an entire year for my brain to catch up with my new reality.
With a mother as a former flight attendant and an aunt as a working one, nothing surprised me too much about the actual job duties. I did a deep internet dive before my interview, scouring Glassdoor, watching endless YouTube day-in-the-life videos, and scrolling through Facebook groups. I braced myself for sleep deprivation and long days in front of the public. I was already used to a strange schedule and living paycheck to paycheck from years as a seasonal and restaurant worker, so that didn’t faze me. But the twelve hours without fresh air or direct sunlight delivered a real gut punch.
When they told us in training that one of the items we’d need to keep on us at all times was a passport, I thought, Wow, maybe this job is for me! We could be sent to a foreign country at any moment!
When this actually did happen, it couldn’t have been further from the dreamland of View from the Top. It was during a set of reserve days, a period of time when scheduling can call you with three hours’ notice or less. You could be filling in for another flight attendant who called out, or for a myriad of other reasons: added flights, cancelled flights, weather, mechanicals, delays, the list goes on. Most of the time you end up doing red-eyes to Phoenix and staying at hotels by the airport on the trips that don’t get staffed because nobody else wants to work them. Most of the time you won’t be working first class to Paris.
On one of my last days of reserve, I thought I was safe. They scheduled me to deadhead back to base, which means getting paid to fly as a passenger. I knew this could change because I was technically available until midnight, but I assumed at the worst I’d be getting home late after a very early start that morning. Instead, scheduling added two extra flights ending in the Dominican Republic for a ten-hour layover, including drive time to the faraway hotel. The next day I’d be working two flights, one to New York and the other back to base, all on my day off. It’s technically legal for the airlines to fly you into your day off during IROPS, or irregular operations, which seems to happen about once a week during summer because of storms and the volume of flights. It’s a blanket scenario that means the airlines can use us to their advantage despite not being scheduled.
If I’m being honest, the trip wasn’t all bad. I did laps in the rooftop pool in the dark to get some exercise and fresh air, and sipped some tropical drink with my feet in the hot tub as I looked out onto the city lights. But I’d be getting less than six hours of sleep for the third night in a row, and I’d miss my therapy appointment the next day that I badly needed. The whiplash of feeling grateful to resentful and back again tired me more.
I can handle drunk passengers cursing at me. I can handle never working a set schedule and not knowing where I’ll be for days at a time. But the health aspect continues to irk me.
I find it funny when people are disappointed by my honest take on my job. It’s like they want me to fulfill some fantasy for their entertainment. They want me to say things like, You wouldn’t believe who was in first class, and, That layover was just fabulous, as I kick off my heels and grab a martini and a cigarette at the end of a long, glamorous day, sliding onto my plush couch that I bought with all my extra spending money. I feel I’m disappointing them when I tell them my job is sometimes just as challenging as theirs—and the lifestyle an added layer.
During the grueling training it takes to get on the line, a veteran flight attendant gave me some sage advice. In my sleep-deprived state, I remember her saying something like, “It’s more of a lifestyle than a job. If you can handle it, then it’s for you.”
There’s a quote often attributed to Charles Bukowski (the origins are a bit murky) that goes, “And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?” Many of my coworkers are single, unmarried, or divorced women. Flitting about the world, most seem financially solvent and put on an air as though nothing can tie them down.
If I’m being honest, I play into the stereotype. The flighty flight attendant who never knows what day or time it is, whose schedule is always changing. The lifestyle adds an air of mystery when my location on my dating profile changes multiple times a day, and my job title is probably why I interest some who might otherwise swipe left. If I get overwhelmed in a new relationship, I don’t need to manufacture a reason to skip town.
I can visit friends and family around the globe because of my job, and I’ve traveled to six different countries in two years. I finally started contributing to a 401(k) at 32, and when I’m not working I can focus on writing instead of hustling between two or three different jobs.
But then I scare myself when I look in the airplane’s bathroom mirror and I see my sallow skin and feel the cumulative fatigue. I’m sure I’ve lost my short-term memory from all the sleep deprivation. I spend more time solo than I ever have in my adult life. Being around so many people in a day wears me down, and my schedule often doesn’t match up with my friends. It’s logistically tiring to try to date.
It’s a job of extremes that few are built for.
For the ones that make it, a.k.a. the senior mamas with decades under their belt, or crew members that smile through it all, do you chalk it up to attitude? To toughness? To gratitude for a reliable job in a sinking economy? Or do you put the entire airline industry under a microscope and ask why it needs to be so physically and emotionally taxing?
Is it a matter of mental health, acceptance of capitalist norms, or generational work ethic, an idea the senior mamas would have me believe? Or reasons to do with privilege and my thinking that something better is always waiting for me around the corner?
These are the questions I ask myself daily.
If there’s two things I know, it’s that the job in Donna’s world only exists in Hollywood. The other is that it’s easy to mistake freedom for loneliness.
This essay is part of Work Week, a series of essays related to work and career. Stay tuned for more this week, and see our Work section for past essays.
Megan Marolf is a flight attendant based in the Western US. She writes the Substack Flightlandia about the absurdities of airline travel.
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“It’s more of a lifestyle than a job. If you can handle it, then it’s for you.” How many jobs out there can also make this claim? Too many, I suppose -- they claim your every waking hour and demand nothing less than your soul. This is an insightful piece. Thank you.
I wasn’t aware of the extent to which sleep deprivation is so common among flight attendants. Perhaps naively, I assumed a little more downtime between flights was baked into the schedule. A lifestyle versus a job, indeed.