The LAV Smoker

3:30am my alarm goes off. I could barely open my eyes. Five more minutes, I thought to myself. I reached over and hit the snooze button. A few minutes later, it went off again. These early report times always seemed so brutal. I must get up now. My worst fear has always been sleeping in past my alarm or waking up at my report time—both of which have already happened but those are stories for another day. It took me thirty minutes to get ready. I headed to the airport around 4am and got to the parking lot by 5am, giving me enough time to take the shuttle to the airport, go downstairs to check in, and catch up on work emails before meeting with my crew.

As I was getting ready in the morning, I felt excited for work. I always get an unexplainable, fuzzy feeling of happiness knowing I will be flying. I am content knowing I am there to assist everyone that comes aboard the plane whether it be safety related or overall flight experience. I love first time flyers and seeing little kids' faces light up when they first board. I am ready to celebrate with anyone who has a birthday or is celebrating an anniversary, or empathize and try to make the flight more enjoyable for those who are flying on sad or unfortunate circumstances.

  

This was a four-day trip that started out smoothly. It wasn't until day two of our trip that things started getting interesting. I was working lead position and it was our third flight that day. As we started to descend, the pilots called for something security related. I had another flight attendant assisting me when all of a sudden we heard a strange noise—a triple chime. It was an alarm of some sort I had never heard. I panicked as soon as I saw the amber light appear on my flight attendant panel. The words SMOKELAVF appeared on the screen. The smoke detector had gone off in one of the lavatories (restrooms) in the back of the cabin. Someone is smoking! Is it a fire? I  need to get back there! Remain calm. Breath. All these panicked thoughts raced through my mind. I immediately grabbed the phone to notify the flight attendant in the back while the other flight attendant who was in the front with me rushed to the back to see what had happened. As soon as I picked up the phone, the captain was already on the line asking about the smoke alert they had received in the flight deck. I told him we were aware of the situation, and I would call him back as soon as I had all the details.

After knocking several times, the flight attendant in the back unlocked and opened the door to the lavatory. Inside was a man pooping, watching The Office on his phone, and apparently vaping (taking all the fumes in) which he confessed once he got out. We informed him that he had broke an FAA regulation and he could possibly be fined. He was very apologetic as we  took down his information and filed necessary paperwork. The pilots were in disbelief once we told them what had happened. Upon landing, we had someone meet the plane to escort him off. 

That same flight we had an obnoxiously rude passenger seated in premium class. He snapped at the flight attendants working main cabin, was generally noncompliant, and asked me for a beer literally when service was already done and we were about to land, giving me an annoyed grunt when I said no. My coworkers and I looked up his name and couldn't stop laughing when we saw it was Dick... How fitting.

This was one of my more eventful trips thus far...

xoxo,

Guadalupe♥️