Monday, May 12, 2008
Finally, the time had come for me to face Big Bertha -- the airborne antichrist.
Sep 8, 2000 | Pilots have been known to tremble when she comes plodding onto an airplane with a chip on her shoulder and a snarl on her face. Fellow flight attendants cringe when she commandeers the first-class galley, casting an evil eye on those who dare invade her "private" workspace. She's been chastised by management for a long list of infractions -- cussing out first-class passengers, refusing to serve hungry pilots, making unauthorized P.A. announcements that urge the disgruntled to grab their belongings and kindly step outside. She's a frequent flyer's worst nightmare, the poster girl for curtness and disdain.
Her name is Bertha, but we call her "Big Bertha," not simply because her ass is as wide and unruly as the tail section of a jumbo jet in turbulent air (30 years of feasting on airplane lasagna can wreak havoc on a flight attendant's posterior), or because her voice clacks through the cabin as if amplified through a megaphone. We call her Big Bertha because she's crass, mean, a borderline psychotic truly the flight attendant from hell!
Like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, Big Bertha existed in the realm of legend and imagination. In more than a decade of flying, I had never actually seen her. But news of her existence was widespread, instilling fear in those who had yet to fly with her.
During one unforgettable flight, Big Bertha allegedly stormed into the cockpit after the captain demanded to be fed before the first-class passengers. Angered by his insolence, she raised her dress, peeled the super-queen panty hose from her sumo wrestler hips, pointed to a private place which hadn't seen action since the days before airline deregulation, and said: "Dinner is served, captain! But hurry up, I ain't got all day."
Needless to say, the captain lost his appetite. Some say the poor guy never ate another airplane meal.
Another Big Bertha classic occurred on a flight to the Caribbean. According to the story, a West Indian dignitary had been complaining about shoddy service. He settled into his first-class seat, demanding champagne and attention. Without giving the cabin crew adequate time to respond, he pressed the flight attendant call button. Within seconds, he pressed it again. Big Bertha approached him with her arms folded and eyes blazing.
Realizing she had brought neither champagne nor an appropriate measure of humility, the V.I.P. passenger went ballistic. "Where is my champagne!" he shouted. "Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?"
Bertha abruptly turned her back on the inconsolable V.I.P. She strolled into the galley, cleared her throat, picked up the microphone, and in the cool mellifluous parlance of a radio talk-show host, she made an announcement that will forever echo through the corridors of the P.A. hall of fame.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said. "May I have your attention. May I have your attention, please."
The cabin grew quiet. Three pilots, four flight attendants and more than 130 passengers waited.
"We have a passenger in first class who does not know who he is," she said. "If anyone knows who he is, if anyone has a clue to his identity, would you please come up and let us know immediately."
The airplane erupted in laughter. Not surprisingly, the dignitary found no humor in this personal attack. He had been mocked, raked over the coals of rudeness and embarrassment. When Big Bertha finally delivered a glass of champagne, he gave her a look that could have melted a glacier, and she gave him a look that could have frozen the melt.
Although the dignitary remained silent for the duration of the flight, he complained to agents upon arrival and wrote a scathing letter to the company. Big Bertha was unceremoniously suspended -- one of her many suspensions.
As years went on, Big Bertha's legend grew to new heights of absurdity. Someone claimed she lived with 26 cats in a crumbling ranch house in Pasadena, Calif. Someone else said she had been arrested by Swiss police for causing a disturbance in a chocolate shop. Others said she belonged to a cult, slapped an offensive pilot and strapped cans of Purina to her roll-aboard luggage so she could feed stray cats during overseas layovers.
During one of Big Bertha's memorable flights, a passenger rang his call button to complain about the chicken entrie. "This chicken is bad," he told Bertha, in a tone as nasty as the meal. She snatched the poultry from his tray, raised it high in the air and smacked the chicken with her open hand. "Bad chicken, bad," she shouted. She then dropped the bird on his tray, stomped her hooves like a rhino and disappeared into the galley.
If these stories are true -- and they've been confirmed by many flight attendants -- Big Bertha is someone not to fuck with. I considered myself lucky to have avoided her all these years.
But as luck would have it, my time to confront her had come.
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