READ Before Becoming a Flight Attendant - Flight Attendant PSA Airlines Employee Review

Let's start with the interviewing process which was a like a sloppy presentation in a hotel banquet room in Columbus, filled with women who like me, were eager to satisfy their "little girl dreams" of being a flight attendant. The entire process felt like joining a sorority. I paid about $150 for a Calvin Klein suit, which looked like something a flight attendant would wear. I was forced to answer strange questions in a group of 50+ people. Then the training started and this was absolute hell. In order to complete this flight school training you had to come prepared with a very specific, strict uniform= 5 pairs of plain khaki pants (surprisingly hard to find in 2014), 5 navy blue plain polo shirts, a white pair of tennis shoes, white socks, black slacks, white button down tops, panty hose, and black high heels. The required uniforms for training cost me over $300, and also included a variety of school supplies- which at the time I had to put on a credit card. The classes were long, in a fluorescent room with no windows. I went to a private college ranked top in the state, I graduated with a 4.0 GPA, and I never felt real school stress until I started studying to become a flight attendant. One month of separation from friends and family living in a dumpy hotel near the airport, training 9-10 hours a day 5 days a week, with constant pressure, memorization, and testing. Each night I studied until 11PM, and then had to wake up at 5:45 to be able to meet the standards of dress, make-up, and hair each morning for class. Fast forward to the last week of training when you PURCHASE your mandatory uniforms which were over $500 (deducted from payroll). I stupidly decided to buy dresses, which meant I was required to wear high heels- only during flight were flight attendants permitted to flat shoes. I raced through the airport for months in high heels- out of fear of being spotted by a check flight attendant (the spies, as I called them). I am still correcting the toll this took on my feet, your entire body swells when you fly, and then you reach the ground and slowly- de-swell….imagine what this does to all the tiny joint, and ligaments in your toes. Oh AND I was forced to move to Knoxville, TN and moved in with a fellow middle aged flight attendant, renting a spare bedroom in her condo for $50/month. Come to find, 2 months into this arrangement that she and her pilot boyfriend were swingers, and asked me to join them in their "lifestyle." Uhhhmmm, no thank you! I then moved out, and back to my hometown, after sending an email to HR explaining the difficulty financially to relocate to another city, while paying a mortgage in my hometown. The worst part of all, is CREW SCHEDULING. These are grumpy women who sound like they smoke 5 packs a day, who you are required to call, check in, and answer their calls- or call back within 10 minutes to avoid being written up. They can call you when you are ON CALL and you have to be at the airport within 45 minutes. Back at home my cat developed fatty liver disease, probably out of depression from having a full time cat-sitter instead of it's owner. My boyfriend cheated on me because I was never home, and I lost a family member in a sudden, unexpected death. I was dealing with very sad circumstances at home while flying sometimes 6 flights/day, 5-6 days/week. I remember crying so many times in airport bathrooms. I don’t know what it is about this job that scares people into doing things un-imaginable. These flights- although short in duration- they add up. YOU ONLY GET PAID WHEN THE AIRPLANE DOOR IS CLOSED. You wake up in crappy hotel rooms, you load all the snacks you can fit in your tiny suitcase from the hotel lobby because $1200/month is impossible to live on. You get in a bus with your flight crew, drive to the airport, get through security, wait 15 minutes IF THINGS ARE PERFECT, many times you wait hours due to delays. You then load the stinky plain that you are forced to tidy up, stock beverages and snacks, and fold seat belts. You then wait another 20-45 minutes loading passengers, and then FINALLY, you shut the plane door, fly 45 minutes and then open the door. (BOOM, no more pay). You unload the plane, UNPAID, your clean the plane, UNPAID, you walk through the airport all day, UNPAID, you live at hotels UNPAID, unless you consider that $40/day per diem enough money to feed yourself, buy coffee, and dinner/drinks....many times in flight school they would talk about per diem and expect us to be so excited about it, as if it was part of our pay. NO DUMMIES, it is a legal requirement for being on the road nonstop. Fast forward to the end of this nightmare. Constantly lacking sleep, wacked up schedule, switching daily from early mornings to late nights, I started developing a very unfortunate health problem that is common in light skinned people- especially those exposed to high levels of UV radiation. AKA- airplanes. I developed Pinguecula on my eyes, diagnosed in my final month as a flight attendant, and never seen before by my optometrist. A pinguecula is a benign, or noncancerous, growth that develops on your eye. These growths are called pingueculae when there are more than one of them. These growths occur on the conjunctiva, which is the thin layer of tissue that covers the white part of your eye. In addition, to health issues, I was constantly being harassed by male pilots, who demanded to “inspect my hotel room” only to attempt to persuade me to go out to dinner or drinks. My last night as a flight attendant, is now comical, but at the time was an actual nightmare. I was ON CALL with 30 minutes to go to being in the clear. I had a chicken in the oven and a dinner party starting at 6:00PM. CREW SCHEDULING called me. They wanted me to deadhead to CLT, and work the flight coming back to DYT. I got to CLT around 8 PM, and the flight back to DYT was delayed, go figure. By the time we boarded and departed it was 12:15 AM. Right after I finished beverage service the pilot rang me from the flight deck. He told me that the Brakes and Flaps failed on the plane, and that we had to do an emergency landing in Columbus, because Dayton did not have a long enough runway to land the plane. I could not fathom how we were doing to land a plane, without any way to slow the plane down in the air, or on the ground. I had to perform brace commands to the passengers, shouting, “bend over, heads down, stay down.” I was so shaken up when we landed that it took everything I had to conceal my anxiety to the passengers. When everyone was off the plane I broke down. I was so relieved to have landed, roughly, but safely….I knew that night that this job, for $12,000.00 a year, without family, or home life, or sense of calm….was not worth it. I resigned after 7 months, and received a bill in the mail for $300 which PSA claimed I owed for my uniforms which were no longer in rotation because we were bought by American Airlines during my time there. They would not accept me returning the uniforms without the tags on them. I was over $1000 in credit card debt at this time, and received my last paycheck for $450. They turned me into debt collection, after I agreed to only pay half of what I owed. I just received another bill this week for $148 from 2014. I plan to write a book titled, “Fairy Tales while Transporting Humans,” which served as a therapy journal for me when I was at my darkest times as a flight attendant for PSA.