A Day as an On-Call Bird

Once again, I let the voters decide what they wanted to read for the next big hen article and I now see a trend. When given the choice, people want to read about the real pain and suffering of being a flight attendant. Thanks. At least the budget airline is a constant source of new clucking material.

Today's topic is a day in the life of a reserve flight attendant. Specifically, it's about my typical day as a reserve, since my little airline doesn't value my sanity as much as some airlines with newer contracts. But I know they're keeping me slightly unhinged for Hen material!

Learning to Fly: This is Not the Ice Show!

It's been a whirlwind of life again since quitting my second job of 2017.  Although I've proven unsuccessful at quitting ice skating, I'm now a pro at quitting soul-sucking office jobs. Since flapping away from office job attempt #2, I returned to the ice show, lost a grandma, and took a flying leap of faith into an entirely new career path. Free time and humor have been sparse, but the universe can't cluck me out yet! In fact, my new career makes too much sense in retrospect: I've learned to fly.

I Just Wanted to Be Thrifty Part I

I had flowing hair before this search.

This summer has been an ongoing saga planning a trip to my hen friend's wedding in August. Once we flew into June and I knew I could go, I pecked through the entire Internet to find the best airfares and car rental prices. In 2013, we have countless ways and resources to find the best deal and save money. But with that comes a nasty repercussion: we have countless ways and resources to find a deal. So instead of the old days, where I could make one or two phone calls and accept whatever price they told
me, I can spend an entire week pecking through the Internet, visiting the company websites and third party discount websites, checking different dates, comparing what city is cheapest to depart, comparing which city is cheapest to arrive, debating if I can finagle a non-stop flight, wondering if prices will be lower tomorrow, wondering if prices will be higher tomorrow, comparing if it's cheaper to buy two one-ways or a roundtrip ticket, wondering why rental cars are so damn expensive, and wondering how long it would takes for someone to find me after I bash my face into the keyboard.

Life as a Robbie Part III

Daily life as a Robbie is my early 20s is mostly smooth sailing now that I fully accept that I can go by Robbie to everyone I meet, but my legal birth name is Robert. Just because my name is always Robert on airline tickets, college degrees and my driver's license does not make me any less of a Robbie. Now those years of therapy just seem silly.

That's me on the left.

But even as a 26 year old (yes, I said early 20s...) I still run into the unexpected kerfuffle in the name department. Not too surprisingly, my recent name fiasco involved United Airlines. I was about to make a joke involving their "friendly skies" tagline, but evidently they stopped using that slogan in 1996. I don't know what's more staggering - the fact that I stopped paying attention to United's marketing after age 11, or the fact that I paid attention to United's marketing as a child younger than 11.