The Air Stewardesses' Footmen

Chief Stewardess Lois Lawson said, "Well, now we must take our leave. Thank you for assisting me here today, Senior Stewardess Donna."

"It's been a pleasure, Chief Stewardess," Donna said earnestly. "To see the way Ms Summers culled the cabin crewmen! It was priceless. It makes me smile to think of it. I mean, to see the looks on their faces, when Ms Summers read out the long list of disimproved terms and conditions they would have to agree to and fully abide by if they were to stay on in their greatly reduced capacities at BlueSky Holidays!"

Smiling, Ms Summers said, "And we'll all be better off without them. Having drastically cut our male staff numbers today, we are in a position to massively increase our female staff numbers. So we can offer immediate starts to the one hundred air hostesses from other airlines, who in their applications have expressed their wish to join us to benefit from our female-priority core values. Forty of the new air hostesses will join us here at Gatwick, and the other sixty will be spread out evenly, ten each at our six regional bases."

"That is fabulous news, Ms Summers!" enthused Donna.

"Some of them can sign up to us immediately, but most must first serve their required minimum notice with their present airline," Ms Summers said. "But we'll get by. The irresistible offer to our air hostesses of overtime at triple-pay rates and extra travel concessions and the double-shifting and reduced rest-perioding of our few remaining cabin crewmen will see us through. So Lois will begin the recruiting process today. Lois will also brief our Head of Crewing, Janice, to maximise utilisation of our remaining cabin crewmen, six of whom are based here at Gatwick."

Chief Stewardess Lois Lawson said, "And, as for our departing cabin crewmen, well, it is better they should go. And no doubt they will find work quickly and fit in rather better at our competitor airlines where there will be a sudden upsurge in cabin crew vacancies."

Ms Summers said, "So today, we have taken the company another step closer to our ultimate goal. Well, now I really must be off. But it's been a pleasure seeing you again, Senior Stewardess Donna. I am extremely pleased that Lois recognised your potential and that I authorised her strong recommendation for your fast-track promotion to Senior Stewardess. I see a bright future for you, Donna. I am sure you will enjoy a greatly gratifying career with us at BlueSky Holidays."

"Thank you, Ms Summers," said Donna. "I am sure I will, too. And especially now, with your introduction of the Subservience to Stewardesses directive."

Ms Gina Summers turned to me now and, smile gone, gave me her stern stare. "Do not give me a reason to call you into my office, Cabin Crewman Mallard. Because, one by one, I will pluck all of your feathers."

With that parting shot, the BlueSky Holidays Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Stewardess turned on their high heels and left us. I admired the backs of COO Ms Gina Summers' shapely bare legs, tanned golden from her latest trip to one of the company's affiliated hotel complex resorts.

I looked at my watch. The time was 13:40. Today I was working BH501/BH502, the BlueSky Holidays 14:00 Monday flight to Cyprus, scheduled to arrive back at Gatwick with returning holidaymakers at 23:50.

Senior Stewardess Donna was buoyant after receiving such high praise and glowing recognition from COO Ms Gina Summers. Donna's career with BlueSky Holidays was really taking off - on the up and up, as it were.

Having noticed me looking at my watch, Senior Stewardess Donna retrieved her smartphone and tap dialled. "Camilla, tell whoever is on Stand-by to operate on your flight: BH501 to Paphos. Cabin Crewman Mason Mallard is now working under me on flight BH529 to Funchal."

Donna held her phone away from her ear, and I could hear the gist of Camilla's outraged complaint that Donna was taking it upon herself to remove me from her flight and onto her own.

"Yes, Camilla, I know it means you will be without a cabin crewman on your flight. Bye, Camilla."

Camilla was Senior Stewardess Camilla Cameron.

At just twenty, Camilla was the youngest Senior Stewardess at BlueSky Holidays - no doubt, Chief Stewardess Lois Lawson had quickly recognised Camilla's outstanding 'potential' too.

Camilla was already a Senior Stewardess when I joined the company. I'd worked under her many times - with disproportionate frequency. That was Camilla's doing, pulling strings with her contacts in Crewing. Camilla's nickname for me was Ducky, and variations thereof which she called me because she knew it got under my feathers, as it were.

I knew from experience that Camilla's reputation for being sharp-tongued and bossy with her cabin crewman underlings was well-founded. And as far as I knew, we were all underlings. In more than a year with BlueSky Holidays, I'd never known a cabin crewman make it to Senior Steward.

But Camilla was particularly despotic and down-putting with me because it was such an easy way to goad her arch-foe: my girlfriend, Gemma.

Camilla and Gemma were longtime antagonists. Committed adversaries, they had pitted themselves against each other all through their secondary school years. I know, because I was there.

Attending the same school in the same year and attending many of their classes, I had witnessed their antagonism. I had listened to their foul-mouthed yelling and screaming and watched their anything-goes catfighting. Not only outside during break times but causing chaos in the classrooms too. I couldn't understand their intense aversion to each other, their implacable enmity, their enduring hostility. They were just chalk-and-cheese characters.

Gemma and Camilla were of chalk and cheese build, too. Gemma was five feet five inches and of slight build. Camilla was five feet eight inches and more substantially built; bigger-boned and fuller-fleshed - voluptuous would be an apt description. But while the comparative powerhouse Camilla had the larger frame and more muscle, her adversary Gemma was the cannier combatant. Gemma's speed of thought and fluidity of movement often got the better of Camilla. It told of Camilla's respect for her perennial opponent Gemma that she called her the 'Ginger Ninja'.

Both still living in their home town, it was inevitable that Gemma and Camilla occasionally crossed paths. And when they crossed paths, just as inevitably, they crossed swords.

But it didn't have to be that way.

Gemma and Camilla could drastically reduce the probabilities for their happenstance confrontations. They could go to a different gym, patronise another hair salon, visit an alternative nail bar. But they didn't - or wouldn't, take these simple measures of mutual avoidance. Gemma and Camilla would not even cross the street to evade the other's approach.

When I joined BlueSky Holidays as a cabin crewman a year ago and told Gemma that Camilla worked there as a Senior Stewardess and that I had worked my first flight duty under her, Gemma had blown her top.

And so it was to prevent an escalation of hostilities between them, and to deny Camilla her little Gemma-goading satisfactions, that I did not report to Gemma any of Camilla's many mistreatments of me.

But Gemma, knowing Camilla, was convinced of their regular perpetration.

Senior Stewardess Donna was unaware of Senior Stewardess Camilla's feud with Gemma. Like most of our cabin crew, Donna sensed 'some kind of turbulent undercurrent', as Terry had put it, between Camilla and me. But Donna was oblivious that Camilla was waging her attritional war with Gemma and winning frequent little victories against Gemma through me.

And so, though her motive was selfish in wanting a cabin crewman on her flight, Senior Stewardess Donna had rescued me, as Camilla was Senior Stewardess on the flight I was rostered to work today: BH501 to Paphos.

Then it hit me: Flight BH529 to Funchal was Madeira. And aboard, going on her latest BlueSky Holidays affiliated resort hotel spot-check/review would be Ms Gina Summers. "Hard work, but someone has to do it."

I wondered now if I had misjudged Senior Stewardess Donna.

Had I wrongly impugned Donna's motives for snatching me from Camilla's clutches and appropriating me to work under her instead today? Had Donna presented me with, if not a career furthering, a career keeping opportunity? A chance to demonstrate my cabin crewman qualities to Ms Gina Summers? To convince Ms Summers that I was, in fact, agreeable?

Because, if so, I owed Donna a debt of gratitude. And I would have to find ways to demonstrate the depth of my appreciation.

So, what to do? How best to seize my career keeping opportunity?

Should I wait on Ms Summers? Or would the COO rebuke me for being over-attentive, tell me that treating her differently from the holidaymakers would not be a good impression?

It might be wiser to let the air hostesses serve the COO her food and drink and tend to any other in-flight requirements. And anyway, the hosties would want to, wouldn't they? To get themselves noticed by Ms Summers. I could only hope to keep my career; theirs could be furthered. So, all things considered, I'd just play it by ear.

Senior Stewardess Donna reached for my neck, and she tightened and straightened my already tight and straight uniform sky-blue tie. There was something proprietary in the way she did it.

"Come on, Mason. You are working under me today. You will be working with air hostesses Deborah, Pamela, Julie and Analise. You are down to work under Camilla, and she was adamant over the phone just now that you still do so. But as they say: possession is nine-tenths of the law."

"Yes, Senior Stewardess Donna."

"There is no point in denying that our Chief Operating Officer Ms Gina Summers is pursuing a reforming agenda of male workforce reduction."

"No, Senior Stewardess Donna, there isn't."

"But Mason, let me add my congratulations to our COO's upon you signing a revised contract. Agreeing to an immediate twenty per cent pay cut, a pay freeze at the next wage review, relinquishing your travel concessions, and pledging to abide by the Subservience to Stewardesses directive."

"Thank you, Senior Stewardess Donna."

"I have always held the opinion that cabin crewmen should be subordinate to - and, yes: subservient to - their female counterparts. And I am sure that a major aspect of what Ms Gina Summers has achieved today with the introduction of her Subservience to Stewardesses directive is the dream of air hostesses worldwide: the empowerment to command a cabin crewman to administer a post-flight foot massage."

"Yes, Senior Stewardess Donna."

"Mason, you are one of the few survivors of a gravely endangered species, of a tenacious, clinging-on remnant of redundancy resistant cabin crewmen. Understandably, you are anxious about your position here, your existentially threatened future. But let me mitigate your misgivings. You are endangered, yes. But not unprotected, if you are from now on a shining example of my version of a model cabin crewman. Am I making myself clear to you, Mason; am I getting through to you?"

"Yes, Senior Stewardess Donna."

"Good. And, do you know what, Cabin Crewman Mason? I am already looking forward to my first ever post-flight foot massage. Looking forward to those hands of yours working on my tired and achy feet when we get back to our crew room tonight. Knowing that this time, Mason, shy and awkward or not, you will oblige me."

"Yes, Senior Stewardess Donna," I said again.

Having signed my name on the dotted line today in committed agreement with the new Subservience to Stewardesses directive imposed by the Chief Operating Officer Ms Gina Summers, it was all that there was to say.

I had to be agreeable.

The Air Stewardesses' Footmen continues in Ch. 2 (of 6). Ch. 2: The Affliction Common to Air Hostesses.