It was May 29 and I was coming
through Houston on the way back from the Galapagos—kind of long-way-around
routing, but what the hey. I’d gotten up at three a.m. in Quito to take
the flight out so I was running on coffee and hope. My flight, Continental
2099, left at 2:20. I was ready to get back to Guadalajara. Swarm aboard the
Embraer, fasten seat belt, haul out book.
Normally the stews go through the usual about overhead bins, seatbelts, and
the rest. They have to do it, everybody has heard it a thousand times, but
the crew is polite about it.
Not this time. The pilot, a woman, got on the horn in a nasty voice and began
dressing down the passengers as if they were recent arrivals at a reform school.
We got a lot of stuff like if we didn’t sit down “I’ll yell
at you, which is fun for me but…not so much for you.” In a joking
tone, this would have been over the top—you don’t lecture adults
you don’t know as if they were feebleminded louts—but she wasn’t
joking. She was bullying. We got more of this as the flight went on. “Don’t
get on my enemies list.” And then (why was I not surprised?) “You’ve
got a woman driver, and I’m a little reckless.”
“Just fly the plane and shut up, how about?” I thought.
They were nothing short of poisonous, uniquely so in my experience. In forty
years of fairly heavy flying, I have never run into an obnoxious pilot nor,
really, an obnoxious stew. Sometimes they look tired and exasperated, as my
god who wouldn’t be in their job, and infrequently a tad cranky. Though
on thought I do remember one exceedingly disagreeable stew, a guy, on American.
That’s total for forty years.
This was something new.
Who the hell did the dyke-bitten little bitch think she was? Air passengers
aren’t ill-bred children in need of discipline by some snot-nosed drill-sergeant
wannabe. They pay good money to fly from A to B. That’s all they pay
for. If they wanted to be treated like first-graders, they would presumably
repeat first grade.
Why do these sorry twits behave as they do? In part because the American
zeitgeist encourages them. American women usually carry The Chip, the anger
that so many have. They’re not going to Take It, whatever It is. They
seem to be looking for some of It not to take. Some seem to equate bitchiness
with manhood. Men of course do not behave that way, the cost of dental restoration
having become prohibitive.
But they do it in large part because they can. In the first place, what can
a passenger do? Write a letter to Continental? The result would be a mouse-click
form letter: “We at Continental appreciate your comments and will look
into the issue you have raised. We strive daily to provide the best….”
In the second place, I suspect that nobody at Continental is about to discipline
a female pilot, who would immediately file a five-million-smacker H-and-D
suit. (Harassment and discrimination.) The airlines are desperate to stuff
women into cockpits, which would be fine if these were required to meet the
same standards as the men, to include being civil. Any female pilot knows
she can face down the CEO if she needs to.
So far as I know, only North American women are forever coiled to strike.
I meet all manner of women from other countries—Mexico, France, Israel,
Italy, Thailand, China, on and on. Many have responsible positions, run their
own companies, what have you. If you gave them a hard time, you would probably
get one in return, but they default to civility. Which is all that is required.
In times past, unpleasant behavior had unpleasant consequences. Officials
of many sorts had to wear name tags and, if the people upstairs got a lot
of complaints, the responsible party would hear about it. Now, no. Management
is afraid to discipline people who fall into the various categories of special
privilege.
In the Galapagos I was aboard the Santa Cruz (which I recommend). I’d
arrived in Quito expecting to do a week on horseback in the mountains, but
that fell through. By dumb luck the Santa Cruz had a cancellation so I grabbed
it.
It’s a sizeable ship, carrying I think about eighty passengers, who
have to be put into Zodiacs twice a day to go look at big-ass turtles. Of
the three officers who ran this complex dance, two were Ecuadorian women.
All three were unfailingly courteous. They were also efficient and solved
the problems that invariably come up as people lose things, can’t swim,
want to do something else, and such. Everything worked because they knew what
they were doing and did it well. But they weren’t bitches.
My group had as guide Joanna, a native of the Galapagos, twenty-seven, a
complex mixture of Spanish, Chinese, and Indian, who had learned English in
eight years of working as a guide. She had a larger vocabulary in speaking
than most American college graduates do in writing. I say this carefully,
without exaggeration. Her husband, a Swiss, was helping her learn German.
When I corrected her English, as she requested, the corrections immediately
showed up in speech. She knew her biology cold, having picked it up by reading.
In short, she was an impressive self-made young lady. She knew the islands
as most of us know our back yards.
Every day she took about fifteen people, averaging over twice her age, to
the islands. To do this she constantly had to tell people what to do, including
the guys who drove the Zodiacs. She (like the other guides, probably half
of whom were female) was completely in command, and had to be, as otherwise
people would have been falling over cliffs, stepping on sea lions, and drowning
themselves.
And she did it without a trace of the aggressive abrasiveness of that godawful
Continental creature. It is perfectly possible to be a woman, to have a job
carrying large responsibility, to handle subordinates and the public, without
being a mouthy termagant in a padded jockstrap.
When you fly Continental, the telescreens descend and you get a message from
the CEO about how dedicated the airline is to improving service, etc. He could
start by telling that crew to cut the lip. Or have their vocal chords removed.
.
