*Originally posted on my blog at http://www.emmieleey.com/2015/12/hit-in-face-by-stack-of-trays-at.html*
This is actually something that happened a pretty long time ago but I feel like enough time has passed now for me to write about it without blowing steam from my ears or praying that the ground will combust at my feet and swallow me up.
The story I’m about to tell began at 30,000ft in the galley of an A380 Airbus. I was working the night flight back from Washington DC and for once, all was going pretty well. I’d been working as Cabin Crew for little under a month and was slowly starting to get the grips of things: the way in which you should present a hot towel to a customer, the correct way to put your hair in a bun and most importantly, how to make a smile and your will to live last for hours on end whilst you’re looking after hundreds of people in a small metal tube propelling itself through the sky.
We were just in the process of clearing up after the second service and I had a million and one things running through my mind: I needed to get the man in 15B another pastry, the woman in 10F a landing card, the toilets needed a new toilet roll, a woman needed some paracetamol for her headache and I needed to make a start on clearing in trays, mugs, glasses and wrappers.
I also needed about a week of non-interrupted sleep.
I was faffing around in the galley doing something or other when I noticed a bunch of trays that weren’t being used. In an attempt to make myself useful, I stacked them up and looked for an empty canister to put them in. I locked eyes on just the one I needed, the one that just so happened to be on the highest shelf. I reached up and flung the trays into the canister and I was just about to shut it when BAM out of the canister and directly into my face they flew and HOLY SHIT. THE PAIN.
It turned out there was a pair of oven mitts at the very back of the canister – oven mitts that my short ass couldn’t see - that they had managed to ricochet away from.
At first I thought my nose was broken. The pain was excruciating and it was the kind of seething agony that makes your vision all blurry and your head fuzzy. It was one of those situations which you know is funny – I mean, come on, who else could get hit in the face by a stack of trays in the galley of a plane – but at the time makes you burst into tears. The more Crew and passengers that huddled around me to make sure I was alright, the more I cried. I remember being so embarrassed that I was crying but I literally couldn’t control it; after all, my face felt like it had been fucking split in half.
As I sat limply on a jump seat with a bag of ice pressed against my face trying to get over the delirium of pain that had consumed me, a Crew member came up to me and said he reckoned I’d have a couple of black eyes forming before I knew it. GOOD. THANK YOU FOR THAT, SIR.
Once we landed, the manager saw that I still wasn’t in a good way and asked how I was getting home; I told her I was driving and after the initial horrified expression I received, she shook her head and said I should phone someone to pick me up because I was in no fit state to drive. Who would want to drive to Heathrow Airport at the crack of dawn to pick me up? I thought. There was only one person who sprung to mind: Callum.
My first concern with texting Callum was that he wouldn’t be up. My second concern was that he had to be at work by 9 and, traffic dependant of course, it was a bit tight for time. But, by some miracle he happened to be awake and he replied instantly saying he’d get straight from his bed to the car. (Remember this. It will become important later).
But, YAY. I was saved...at least I thought.
Before I was free to leave I had to speak to the company’s Duty Managers who told me I should go to A&E when I got home. After being awake for so long, that was the last thing on Earth I wanted to do but I couldn’t be bothered to insist otherwise, so I just nodded and said something along the lines of “what a wonderful idea” and went on my merry way.
I kind of expected Callum to go to the drop off point and wait because that would save us having to pay the extortionate parking prices at Heathrow, but he text me saying he’d parked up and was waiting in Arrivals. No matter. By this point my mascara was halfway down my face, my nose was bright red from where it had been smacked with the trays and I was so tired that the bags under my eyes could be seen from space; IN SHORT, I was willing to pay ten-fold the cost of parking if it meant getting out of that terminal any quicker.
After wandering round arrivals like a dazed ghoul for ten minutes or so, I finally found Callum who immediately commented that he expected me to look a lot worse than I did, which was nice little confidence boost. After that we wandered back to the car park to pay for the ticket. HOWEVER, what soon became apparent was that he didn’t have his wallet on him. Remember when I said to remember earlier that he went straight from his bed to the car. Well, yeah. That’s literally what he did. Literally went from his bed to his car without even picking up his wallet.
NO MATTER.
I had cash. I could pay.
But wait, I didn’t have money. At least not English money. Having just come from Washington DC all that lay in the dark grisly recesses of my purse were a few dollars and a euro or two from a previous trip to Lisbon.
Again, NO MATTER. I had my card. I could pay with that.
Pretty pissed off by this point I rammed my card into the machine, slammed my four digit pin and then, out of nowhere: CARD DECLINED.
What in seven hells was going on?!
I tried again: CARD DECLINED.
Fuck.
Then it hit me: my card must have been blocked by my bank. I had used it at the duty-free in Dulles Airport to buy Callum some Lacoste aftershave. (Yes, I did phone my bank in advance to let them know and yes, they did say that would be fine and dandy, but obviously this is MY life we’re talking about and my card got blocked anyway).
So, here we were. It was 6am at Heathrow Airport, we had no money and Callum’s car appeared to be stuck in the car park until further notice; not to mention that as each half-hour ticked by, our parking bill racked up even more. SO, what were our options?
a) Beg for money. The downside of this was this I was in my uniform and I didn’t know how well British Airways would take the idea of one of their Cabin Crew begging for money from passengers before they’d even entered the terminal.
b) Call my mum to bring us money. The downside of this was she wouldn’t be up and hey, I’m an adult. I could deal with this myself.
c) Wait for a miracle. (Probably the best option).
But before we even needed to choose an option, it hit me. I could take out some host from British Airways! (For anyone who doesn’t know what host is, it’s basically money you can borrow from your next pay check. It is a life-saver in the Cabin Crew world).
I left Callum by the pay machine with my cases (one of which had my phone – remember that for later) and legged it back into the terminal. The very place that half an hour before I thought I was rid of! Out-of-breath and still a bit dazed from the tray incident I got to the Host desk and asked to take out £20 because God only knew how much our parking was at this point. (Another important point to remember in this story was this: I had never taken money out of host before).
Now, every time I had ever walked past the host desk thus far in my Cabin Crew career it had been empty. Never a queue in sight. Not this time! Not when I wanted to use it! One guy was arguing to kingdom come about the exchange rate of South African Rand and the woman in front of me had about £100 in loose change that she wanted to convert to about 10 different currencies. Eventually, and I do mean eventually, I got to the front of the queue and this is more or less how my conversation with the lady at the Host desk went:
Host lady: Can I help you?
Me: I’d like to take out £20 in host.
Host lady: Can I see your ID?
*hands ID*
Host lady: Okay, great. What is your four digit pin?
Me:
Host lady: The four digit pin you chose when you joined the company. What is it?
GOD. DAMN. IT.
It was true, when I first joined BA, I had set up a pin.
Did I remember what that pin was?
Did I fuck!
Fortunately, I am not your everyday average fool because when I plucked these four little digits out of thin air a few months previously, I had the good sense to make a note of it on my phone.
I reached for my phone…but wait, you guessed it, I had left it with Callum.
OH SMITE ME LORD.
So, back to Callum I went to get my phone; then back to the host desk I went with this sacred four-digit code to get my money; then, finally, FINALLY, I had the £20 cash in my hands. Being smacked in the face by those trays felt like an eternity ago and I was beginning to forget it had even happened at all - maybe I should have just driven home all along!
Right, so back at the pay machine we were. Except this time, we were taking no more shit. We were ready. As expected, the parking had risen since we first put the ticket in but HEY we knew that. I crammed my £20 note into the machine and never before or since have I been so happy to get my ticket back. Now all we had to do was get to the car. Except, this was us, it wasn’t that simple..
Me: So, where did you park the car?
Callum: The second floor…I think
Me: …you “think”?
Callum: Maybe the third?
Me: Which one?
Callum: I don’t know.
Both seething, we walked to the second floor and scoured it from top to bottom: it was nowhere to be seen. We tried the third: nope, not there. The fourth: no, not there either. By this point, I’d had enough. I was 50 shades of DONE with lugging my case around every square inch of the car park and I was so sleep-deprived I would have happily just collapsed in an empty parking bay and treated myself to a power nap.
Sensing the mood, Callum said he would go off and check the other floors for the car.
It was as I was waiting for him to come back that I thought it would be just our luck if our newly-paid ticket timed out on us and we had to pay extra because it had taken us so damn long to get out of the car park. The thought alone made me want to be sick because this would mean going back to that sodding Host desk.
NO MATTER. I trusted him. He’d find the car before that happened...I hoped...
It was at that very moment that I saw something I never thought I’d see: Callum zooming towards me in the passenger seat of a total stranger’s white van.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. What the fuck was going on? Maybe it wasn’t Callum? Maybe my eyes had deceived me? But no, as the white van drew closer and drove past me I saw that it was in fact Callum, sat merrily in the shotgun position of some random’s van! Maybe I’d been hit by that stack of trays harder than I thought!
A few minutes passed and I was still left standing gormlessly in the car park not really sure of what the hell I had just witnessed. THEN, I saw it: his Vauxhall Corsa toodling towards me.
I was saved.
It was over.
I could finally go home to my bed. (That was assuming our ticket was still valid).
I chucked my case in the boot, got in and immediately asked Callum what in God's name he was doing in that random white van. This is what he said:
“I was running around the car park looking for that fucking car when this white van pulled up next to me and asked if I needed help. I told the guy that I’d lost my car and he said to get in and he’d help me look. Instead of asking for the model of the car or the color, he asked me for the number plate. He said he had an idetic memory and would see it instantly if he knew the number plate. I had nothing to lose so I got in and we had a chat and looked for the car. Turns out his “idetic memory” was a bit of a scam because he drove straight past my car.”
I had no words.
As we approached the ticket barrier, I half expected it to regurgitate our ticket and tell us to pay again, but by some miracle, it didn’t; it worked! We were outta there!
My overall review of the morning as a whole would be this: a shit sandwich. Cursed from start to finish. If ever there was a sign that things always go tits up for me, it would be this entire anecdote and if you think the day couldn’t have gotten much worse from that point on, you’d be wrong because it was spent sitting in an A&E waiting room and trying to get my bloody debit card unblocked by my bank.
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