Red Eye Etiquette

I just came home from my first napover; a napover is a two day trip which you work the first flight out in the morning, take a 6 to 8 hour nap, and work the red eye back. This particular trip was to San Francisco. Flight out was a normal breakfast flight, mostly everyone slept. Landed 30 minutes early, went to In-N-Out Burger for lunch, took two simply sleep, slept til 6 pm, at the airport by 9, 10pm flight home. We were on the 757-300 and for those of you that are not airplane junkies, its a very long, single aisle airplane. Its one aisle is about as wide as me, and I am happy to say I am not that wide. In general, Boeing aircraft do not provide the customers with the ultimate sitting-in-a-metal-tube-for-six-hour experience. Translation: my ass, everyone else's knees, and the bar cart do not fit in the same limited aisle space at the same time. I apologize for hitting you with my cart, I really do. But did you really miss me dragging it your way? Its a 350 lb cart, the damn thing pushes me. I know you saw it coming. Watch your knees and elbows and put your shoes back on (gross!). This is not your living room.

On red eyes, we use our red eye voice. Keep the lights off the whole flight and do not horse play with our neighbors. Someone failed to tell that to the group of high schoolers, which have thus far been the most annoying. Not only did they annoy me, but those around them. I have a larger problem with harassing others who really paid (not mommy and daddy) to be there, as opposed to how they treated the flight attendants. At 3:30 am EST, the bell goes off. The other flight attendant answers it, and the next thing I know he's got 2 cokes and a sprite in his apron with cups of ice in his hands. Then, there were so many other drink requests that we ran out of sprite in the aft galley. At 4:30, the bell goes off again. I walk over to this pimply 16 year old boy and he hands me his empty can of coke with the cup on top and asks me all snotty, "can you throw this away?" Yes, I can. Can you? So I oh-so-graciously take his refuse and the next thing I know the whole pimple pack is handing me what looks like every piece of trash on the plane. I take one look at their dirty hands full of all sorts of things and tell them to hold their horses while I get a trash bag. Honestly - how do you think I'm going to make it to the galley with all of your cans? I'm the anti- 7-up guy: don't show me your can! I come back with a bag and it was like magic - all the trash disappeared and I had three things in the bottom of the bag. Thank God I don't work for Southwest because there was no way I was going to clean up after them. Next time you take the red eye, take some simply sleep too. And keep your knees out of the aisle!