So, my job comes with many emotions and experiences on the parts of both passengers and airline personnel. Traveling can be stressful for anyone depending on the surrounding circumstances, but sometimes those in-the-moment stressful events turn into something we can laugh about later.
Take one of my passengers, for example. I don’t actually know his real name, but for this story we will refer to him as ‘David’. The day ‘David’ decided to grace us with his presence I happened to be the lead flight attendant. I greeted everyone as they boarded including swagger-licious ‘David’, who strolled on smoother than a Kobe jump shot. He was dressed nicely and talking on his phone in his seat during the entire boarding process. Towards the end of boarding, ‘David’ walks to the front fighting his way upstream to use the lavatory aka bathroom (not cool ‘David’).
Photocred: NeONBRAND on Unsplash
I motioned where the door was since he was still on his phone chatting it up. Some time had gone by; we were ready to shut the door and get out of there, but wait – ‘David’ was STILL in the lavatory. Talking. I could literally hear him talking. Like dude what the heck are you doing? Don’t you know we can’t leave until you’re done in there? Anyway, I politely knock on the door. No answer. I hear talking. That’s fine. We wait another minute or two. I knock again but a little harder this time and say, “Sir we are ready to leave, we do need you to take your seat now.” I can hear that he’s still chatting it up. The pilots ask, “What’s going on back there?” and I explain the situation. We can still hear this guy talking on the phone! As I am explaining this to the pilots I am standing right in front of the lavatory door in a forward-facing position when another flight attendant reaches around the corner and knocks even harder on the door and says loudly “Sir we need you to come out NOW!” That is when the lavatory door flies open and most of my senses were abused! I literally saw in front of me ‘David’, sitting on the lavatory toilet (Ew gross don’t do that on an airplane), pants down by his ankles, with a cell phone to his ear still talking! That is when he said, “Can I take a freaking poop?! (Except he used the not-as-nice versions of those last two words, but oddly, said it in a nice way). My jaw dropped and then quickly closed right back up when the smell hit me! Lord knows I wanted to pass out. I quickly shut the door and let the man finish his business. What else could you do after that? LOL!
On his way out of the lavatory, down the aisle and to his seat, other passengers clapped as he shot is arms up in victory. The whole thing was weird, gross and funny at the same time; I don’t think I’ll ever forget ‘David’ or whatever his name is. He seems like the kind of guy who embraces things as they come and goes with the flow no matter what, and that was probably what I was sensing from him – confidence. I know I overthink things a lot, so in some ways I aspire to be like ‘David’. Because at the end of the day, or middle of a flight, sometimes you just have to take a freaking poo and there’s no person, rule or federal regulation that you should let stop you.
