Airport ’18

Last week I started writing about my job at the restaurant, but before that I was, for almost a year and a half, working at the airport. If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, I would probably have been there longer. Unfortunately it came when I was about to start again there and I never went back. Let me tell you some stories about my job there.

Some time ago I had the idea about the tales from my experience at the airport, and I thought about doing it the classic way, but as I remember them, I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just tell them randomly. After all the job I was in at that time didn’t really matter. Do we have some kind of magnet for weirdos? I am normally very lucky in these matters, but when is enough really enough?

A long time ago my cousin worked at the information desk at the airport, in the old terminal. She would write letters to us, when she didn’t have anything to do during the waiting periods there, where she would tell us all her adventures at the airport. She knew how to make them very interesting and fun. It was very nice. Then she found something else and got away from this sector, thus from the fun. When I started working there, she immediately told me to keep a diary about my life there because I would enjoy myself a lot. I didn’t, but I have a good memory.

When I finished university I tried to get hired at the information centre at the airport since I remembered my cousin’s tales and I wanted to have fun. Unfortunately I didn’t cover their expectations. By that time most of the travellers were German, and they demanded me to know the language. At the interview I told them, when they showed their true colours, that I was fluent in both English and French, and it should be enough. They cast me off. So I gave up that place for work.

Years later, after I came back from France, and I got fed up with pilates and all the obstacles I found work away from it, a friend of mine helped me get my foot inside the terminal. She told me who to talk to and where to apply. It was a success. I was to start at the wheelchair service at the airport. I passed the interview and the classes and exams. Still it took them two and a half months to call us to start working.

My first day came, I had never pushed a wheelchair before, and there I was, five minutes into my first shift, my first assignment was to collect a woman at the check-in desk and go through security with her. Easy peasy. Well it wasn’t like that. So there I went to get her from the desk and I had no clue where to go. The handling agent saw my face and she asked me if it was my first day, I told her it was and I didn’t know what to do. She was very kind and told me how easy it was and that everyone would help me, so not to be shy and ask for help. It was true. They were all very kind.

I thought everything would be fine. It was ten past eight in the morning, not many people at the security control. I helped the lady with her belongings and stuff, and suddenly I hear the security lady telling me to please ask the passenger to open her suitcase for them. Actually it was more like a cabin bag. I told her and she did, and there it was, a whole set of knifes, shining amongst her clothes. My eyes were like plates. The lady told her she can’t take that on board, and the passenger argued that those were a gift for her son. Gift or not tjey had to stay. I told the lady that she could have put them in the hold with her luggage, which she had left at the check-in desk, she said she didn’t want to lose them but now it was too late for that. So she lost the set of knifes there. I was astonished. Who in their right mind does that?

First day at work and weirdos at the airport, check! It would not be the only or the most strange situation.

At the wheelchair service we had lots of passengers that needed assistance through the airport, whether because of mobility issues or because of mental or perception disabilities, like blind or deaf people. Most of them were very grateful that we could help them. It really felt like I mattered and that my job was important. Still there were others that made me think the human race needs some slapping.

One morning, very early, it was on those first flights of the day which always happen before the security control opens for the assistances, I got called to help a family with a child in a wheelchair and with autism. So as always I got to the check-in desk and met the passengers. Two women and a girl, in an electric wheelchair, she really looked like she needed assistance. So I asked the adults what they needed me to do. They told me she can’t be touched by strangers and she is actually afraid of flying. They needed help to go through security without her noticing she is in an airport. She maybe was autistic but not stupid. She had been fooled until then but at the control she wreaked havoc on her companions, she went crazy and started to hit them really hard. The guys from security and I just kept away from the fight and watched until they calmed down. I resumed my job then and took them to the gate, very happy not to be in charge of the boarding of that plane. What I never understood is why the adults would put her through all that fuss considering they knew she was afraid of flying and she wouldn’t understand it, then why torture her like that.

Another type of annoying passenger is the one that thinks you owe them something. They didn’t get that the reduced mobility service is free and available for anyone that needs it, not something for VIPs only. One woman came to our desk speaking in English and saying it was unbelievable she had been waiting 10 minutes for any of us to pick her friend up from the waiting area and take them to the duty-free shops. «This is not what I paid for!» so first of all I apologised if she felt left alone, but all our colleagues were busy at the moment, then I asked her who made her pay for this because it was free and if they did pay they got scammed. She said it was the airline, so I advised her to claim to them that money back once they got back to London. That was a big rip off. I was sorry she had to wait but it would be solved very soon and not to forget to claim, I insisted. Once she was gone, my colleague, who was laughing under the desk, told me I had a good sense of humour telling her that, besides she couldn’t have paid for it because she was not even on the list, hence she didn’t reserve the service when she booked the flight. Whatever, I knew it but I didn’t want to tell her off. Just being polite.

Some don’t deserve it. Another day a passenger to Geneva arrived at the desk when the flight was about to board. So we told her it would be hard to get her there on time. She shouted at us she would run if she could but she had a broken limb so we had to make it happen. When we told her what was going on, she just said we are useless since we don’t want to call the pilot tell him she is on her way and to wait. My colleague that has more experience told her this is impossible and not the way things work at the airport. She told her to f off because she wasn’t helping, she had to be on that flight and it cannot take off without her. We didn’t want to help her, she shouted, the pilot should know she was there and delay the flight… Just so you know, she didn’t fly, the low cost airlines don’t wait for anyone, and as a passenger your duty is to be on time for the flight.

Another one was in the same situation but her solution was even better. The plane was already taxiing to the runway to take off, when she shouted at us to take the ambulift (the small bus/truck they use to bring passengers onto the plane or from it), to drive to the plane and board her in the middle of the runway… Then again. She didn’t fly. Nonsense.

The thing I learned there was that people tend to get stressed when they are at the airport. They also lose some basic abilités because of it. Most of all, when they are polite almost everything is possible, on the other hand, when they are jerks, they tend to be left aside. That is something I had to use a lot more when I started working on handling. On the wheelchair service the majority of them were very grateful, not like on the airlines. That is for another post.

April 2022