{"id":137167,"date":"2023-09-09T20:06:15","date_gmt":"2023-09-09T20:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magdelaine.net\/?p=137167"},"modified":"2023-09-09T20:06:15","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T20:06:15","slug":"im-a-former-flight-attendant-and-heres-the-brutal-reality-of-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magdelaine.net\/lifestyle\/im-a-former-flight-attendant-and-heres-the-brutal-reality-of-the-job\/","title":{"rendered":"I&apos;m a former flight attendant and here&apos;s the brutal reality of the job"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>I&#8217;m a former flight attendant and here&#8217;s why a working life at 38,000ft isn&#8217;t always glamorous, from the strains of &#8216;smiling all day&#8217; to customers spitting on the floor and peeing on seats<\/h1>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Marika Mikusova spent five years working for a &#8216;luxury airline&#8217;\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>The 33-year-old has penned a book about her career &#8211; Diary of a Flight Attendant\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>She spoke exclusively to MailOnline Travel about her life at 38,000ft\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>READ MORE: Which passengers are least likely to be bumped from a full flight<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keen on a high-flying life as cabin crew?<\/p>\n<p>Before you send your CV off to a prospective airline, pay close attention to the recollections of former flight attendant Marika Mikusova, who spent five years working for a &#8216;luxury airline&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>The 33-year-old, who has penned a book about her cabin crew career called Diary of a Flight Attendant, revealed to MailOnline Travel that the job can sometimes be distinctly unglamorous.<\/p>\n<p>When we asked her how the reality of being a flight attendant compared to the preconceptions, Czech Marika, who lives in Prague, said: &#8216;All of us pretty soon realised &#8220;flight-attending&#8221; is not just about looking glamorous and smiling. It&#8217;s just a fragment of the duties.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;I experienced a passenger telling me &#8220;you are just an air waitress&#8221;. Ouch! Yet, I had to remain professional and deliver his preferred meal and whatever he asked for service-wise.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/08\/15\/75218093-12496497-image-a-17_1694182632404.jpg\" height=\"539\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Former flight attendant Marika Mikusova, who spent five years working for a &#8216;luxury airline&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;What passengers don&#8217;t know &#8211; and I can&#8217;t blame them, it&#8217;s not common knowledge &#8211; is that we are primarily trained to get them safely out of the plane in case of emergency. Sometimes this part of the job is underappreciated from the passengers&#8217; point of view.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>What were the toughest aspects of the job?<\/p>\n<p>Marika said: &#8216;Smiling all the time! Really, try to smile the whole day. It will take its toll on you. Like apologising to a chair when you accidentally bump into it while going to a bathroom in the middle of the night.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>She explained that rude passengers didn&#8217;t help, adding: &#8216;I can imagine that a lot of my colleagues struggled at the beginning and had to learn how to politely deal with rude passengers without yelling at them back.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/08\/15\/75217553-12496497-image-a-22_1694182771960.jpg\" height=\"652\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Marika, who lives in Prague, said: &#8216;&#8221;Flight-attending&#8221; is not just about looking glamorous and smiling&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/08\/16\/75217575-12496497-What_were_the_toughest_aspects_of_being_a_flight_attendant_Marik-a-2_1694187774699.jpg\" height=\"576\" width=\"633\"><\/p>\n<p>What were the toughest aspects of being a flight attendant? Marika (above in Dubai) said: &#8216;Smiling all the time! Really, try to smile the whole day&#8230; &#8216;<\/p>\n<h3>READ MORE:\u00a0EASYJET REVEALS WHICH PASSENGERS ARE LEAST LIKELY TO BE BUMPED FROM AN OVERBOOKED FLIGHT\u00a0<\/h3>\n<p>Every year tens of thousands of people with valid plane tickets are bumped off flights because they&#8217;ve been overbooked. Overbooking is not illegal and every airline does it to maximise its revenue \u2013 because there is almost a zero per cent chance that every passenger will show up for their flight&#8230;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And jumping from one time zone to another took its toll.<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;Going to bed at different hours inevitably messes up your body clock. And if you don&#8217;t take good care of yourself, you might end up ill a few times per month. I experienced coughing and had blocked ears countless times a year.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Then there was the strict code of conduct \u2013 and the ease with which crew could find themselves being reprimanded.<\/p>\n<p>Marika revealed: &#8216;What I personally found demotivating about the job was the atmosphere of fear in which we had to work. Even minor nonsensical misconduct got us a first-row ticket in our manager&#8217;s office. If you forget to bring a customer his drink and he complains, your supervisor has to write a report for the airline about it.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>And Marika had her patience tested fairly often by passengers.<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;Customers spat on the floor, peed on the seats, we found traces of excrement on the toilet wall once, and one passenger wanted me to bottle-feed her baby \u2013 she seemed to think it was my duty.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;And passengers would ask for our phone numbers.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/09\/08\/75218105-12496497-Marika_Mikusova_s_book_Diary_of_a_Flight_Attendant_is_out_now-m-2_1694242940048.jpg\" height=\"796\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Marika Mikusova&#8217;s book, Diary of a Flight Attendant, is out now<\/p>\n<p>Marika revealed that her airline created a group to help cabin crew maintain their mental health \u2013 &#8216;but it wasn&#8217;t much use&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>She said: &#8216;We were scared to talk about our mental health issues because we might have been found &#8220;unfit to fly&#8221; and on that account fired. For that reason most of us kept for themselves the sad reality of what was happening inside of us.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Would she ever return to the skies?<\/p>\n<p>Marika added: &#8216;Under a few conditions, yes. First of all, the flying hours would have to be decreased to a manageable level. Because if you fly too much, you can&#8217;t rest properly and sooner or later you might start having multiple health problems.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;If the working environment \u2013 i.e management &#8211; changed and was more understanding rather than backstabbing, then yes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Though when it comes to passengers, there is nothing to be done about certain behaviours. But no matter how &#8220;complicated&#8221; the passengers were, I wouldn&#8217;t change them. And I wouldn&#8217;t even have to if the first two conditions were met.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><span>Marika Mikusova&#8217;s book <\/span><span>Diary of a Flight Attendant<\/span><span> is out now. Click here to order a copy. You can find Marika tweeting at <\/span><span>twitter.com\/letuska_m<\/span><span> and her Instagram account is <\/span><span>here<\/span><span>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/09\/08\/75240221-12496497-image-m-5_1694243151787.jpg\" height=\"459\" width=\"634\"><\/p>\n<p>Marika, pictured above in\u00a0Rio de Janeiro, revealed that one passenger wanted her to bottle-feed her baby \u2013 &#8216;she seemed to think it was my duty&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/travel\/article-12496497\/Im-former-flight-attendant-heres-working-life-38-000ft-isnt-glamorous-strains-smiling-day-customers-spitting-floor-peeing-seats.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m a former flight attendant and here&#8217;s why a working life at 38,000ft isn&#8217;t always glamorous, from the strains of &#8216;smiling all day&#8217; to customers spitting on the floor and peeing on seats Marika Mikusova spent five years working for a &#8216;luxury airline&#8217;\u00a0 The 33-year-old has penned a book about her career &#8211; Diary of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I&amp;apos;m a former flight attendant and here&amp;apos;s the brutal reality of the job - magdelaine.net<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/magdelaine.net\/lifestyle\/im-a-former-flight-attendant-and-heres-the-brutal-reality-of-the-job\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I&amp;apos;m a former flight attendant and here&amp;apos;s the brutal reality of the job - magdelaine.net\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#8217;m a former flight attendant and here&#8217;s why a working life at 38,000ft isn&#8217;t always glamorous, from the strains of &#8216;smiling all day&#8217; 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