Curious, what it's really like to be a flight attendant ?

Hey there, my name is Elly and I accidentally found that platform.
I have my personal blog focused on traveling but a lot of topics have stayed in the shadow so I decided it will be great to share it here.

For for the past 3 years and 5 months I’ve been working as a cabin crew (or flight attendant, stewardess or whatever term you would like to use about my job).

People here said it's good to introduce yourself. People also say it's never a good practice to fully expose yourself in the face of a stranger. So, I hope my photo below meets all the requirements.

When most of the people find out what I do for a living everyone suddenly become extremely curious.
At the beginning I was wondering why? Why people are so curious about flight attendants? After some time I found the answer myself.

First because being a cabin crew it’s not just a job. It’s more than a job. It’s a lifestyle.

Second, I think you can ask 90% of the people the following question:
“What is the typical day for someone in your role”?

If you ask the same question someone with my profession I’m sure it will be impossible to give you an answer, simply because there’s no a typical day in my job.
And that’s one of the reasons why you could love it or hate it.
What do I mean?

I don’t work from 9 to 5 which is amazing because that’s one of the reasons why we all choose this job.
I don’t have the regular weekends which is good because I can have rest while everyone else is working and I have a lot of free time, but also is bad because is hard to catch up with my friends who are not crew.

Everyday I work with different people which some of you might think is great because I don’t have to face “that annoying colleague from the 3rd floor” or “the nasty boss who thinks my main responsibility is to take care of the mailbox and answer phone calls”.

In my airline (I prefer not to mention my company name and I hope you will be ok with this) we have more than 20 000 crew (no, it’s not a joke) which is why you always see different faces.
It’s great but could be also a challenge because it’s hard to make friends. At some point you’re so used to this diversity so you just stop caring about people and their life.

I think people are so fascinated and ask so many questions because there’s also some kind of mystery in our job. I mean, we look like we are there just to smile, serve food and drinks and look gorgeous (like a friend of mine said) but a few people know what’s going on behind the scenes.
We’ve been trained how to evacuate a plane in 90 seconds and we've spent some time in simulators trying to find best solution in different types of emergencies (fire, smoke, structural damage of the plane, etc.). We've been also thought what actions to take in case of medical emergencies.

All I'm trying to say is that a lot of the things you see every day it's not what our main responsibility is. We’ve been all hired for a different reason. That reason is safety and security.

After you spend some time in this job you will realize it’s not a job for everyone.
If you ask a future flight attendant "Why do you want this job?" in 99% of the cases you will hear the same old cliche:
“Because I want to travel the world and meet new people”.
If you ask a flight attendant before retirement what is their plan in 99% of the cases you will hear:
“I want to live in a small village far away from any people”.

What happened in between those two phases and why this drastic change is hard to explain. Everyone who has been in my shoes will agree that it’s not an easy job to do and it’s not a job for everyone.
It seems like we are getting paid to travel the world while the truth is that sometimes all we ask for is just to stay at home and SLEEP. Yes, sleeping is a big problem for all of us but that’s another topic.

But you know what?
I still love what I do. After 3 years and more than 450 flights (not including my vacations) I still feel excited every time when I step into an aircraft.
Why?
Because I believe that this job gives you an endless opportunities. It’s up to you if you’re going to make the most of it and use them.
I also think that this applies to many other jobs.

Most of the destinations that I fly to I have only 24 hours layovers.
By the time I arrive I’ve already had a 12-15 hour working day. I rarely sleep before flights because of the odd timings, yet you will be surprised how much you can do in these 24 hours.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t do anything significant in my life (trust me, serving drinks and food even in business class isn’t glamorous at all) but sometimes I find myself in the most amazing places and I realize I’m actually getting paid to do that and the people around me are spending their money and time to be at the same place like me.
I only have 24 hours but you know what? I fuckin’ love every single moment of my day and I learned how to use every single minute.

Apart from my job I try to visit one new country on my own if not every month so every two months. Yes, traveling is an addiction and I’m happy I’m addicted to it.
A simple example of this year. Here it is the list of countries for 2017 that I’ve visited only on my own in my free time:

January - Thailand
February - Barcelona
May - Switzerland & Liechtenstein
June - Kazakhstan
July - Poland and Ukraine
September - Turkey

I still have a lot of free days left and I'm having big plans about more trips until the end of this year.

Flying made me realize a lot of things about life and human behavior (I think I could leave this topic to a whole new article). Something important that I've learned is that there’s no perfect job. Trust me, even if your biggest hobby turns into a profession at some point you won’t feel so passionate about it.
What's my trick?
I always have something to look forward to. It could be new destination, event that I want to attend, person that I'm going to meet, season that I'm missing (did I mention I live in Dubai where we only have 2 seasons: summer and winter that consists of one rainfall every 365 days and temperature of 25 degrees in your best days?).

It could be anything, anything... Always try to keep your mind busy. Make plans. Dream. Make them come true.

As I said before:

“This job gives you an endless opportunities. It’s up to you if you’re going to make the most of it and use them.”