So there I was, sitting in the business-class cabin[1] of a spiffy United 777 ORD-SEA, reading the paper. Across the aisle was a pert young blonde lady, casually dressed. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched her fiddling with various buttons on the seat controls, a delighted smile on her face. Eventually she raised the footrest but couldn’t lower it. She snagged a passing flight attendant and spoke to her for a minute; the FA was clearly peeved, although I couldn’t hear her reply. I settled back into my paper and breakfast; when we arrived in Seattle, I asked her how she’d enjoyed the flight and the seat. She allowed as how it was pretty nice, but that the cabin service hadn’t been all that good. I pointed out that (like most other airlines) UA makes FA assignments based on seniority, and we had a, ahem, pretty senior cabin crew.
The girl fixed me with a cool blue gaze and levelly said, “Well, I don’t appreciate them treating me like a child. After all, I am twenty, and I don’t think twenty is a child these days.” So, I felt old for the rest of the day, although it might just have been sleep deprivation.
[1] United? Yes, United. It was $570 to fly DTW-ORD on NW plus ORD-SEA on UA and back again on the same day: a darn good deal. The UA upgrade cost me 15,000 miles (which I can’t use anyway, since UA doesn’t fly to TOL and barely to DTW), and it was worth it for the schweet 777 ride.
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