Trip Trade from HELL

Every month I like to pick up one or two quick & easy 1-day trips in my crew base.  This month there were very few on our tradeboard in base. And few out of base that were commutable.  Eureka! I had discovered a quick turn out of another base that was commutable!  I called the girl up & told her I'd take it but the system was being weird since I was not based in there. ANYWAYS....after 3 days of her using our online trading system, she got it submitted correctly & then we ended up having to email our request for scheduling to approve.

All would've been fine if I had realized the 1130am flight to our NE hub was cut for January & February!! My report time was 1505 (that's 3:05pm) and my options were flights landing at 1040am and 309pm. Great. I already committed to this trade and have to get up early on my day off, when I thought it'd be simple to hop on a noonish flight- fly for a few hours and come home.

As if sitting around the airport wasn't annoying enough (okay to be fair I got a lot of work done while sitting in the Southwest Terminal's comfy lounge chairs)....I met the other Flight Attendant.

LESSON #1 in Trip Trading: When out of base- double check your commuting options.
LESSON #2......view the crew on the trip!

Remember about 6 months ago when I blogged about my ex-boyfriend the pilot?  For those of you who don't....Let me recap this.  The Flight Attendant I ended up working with for 2 flights is the girl my ex left to date me.  They had been dating for about 6 months.....Now before you start calling ME the homewrecker- let me refresh your memory. This is the girl who was cheated on her MedSchool boyfriend for 6 months, told my ex she loved him, begged him to break up with his 5year long girlfriend (who was 15 years older than him with 4 kids by the way...where was Jeff Foxworthy when I needed him.....i didn't have all this information at the time)....when he broke up with the Cougar, she couldn't possibly break up with her SugarDaddy, but they could agree to date whoever they wanted outside of the industry, but each other inside the industry.  Then enter Me into the picture....he'd apparently had enough of her antics & I was full of morals & grace, sugar & spice & everything nice. So he broke things off.

This girl....For almost a year I knew her name, but not her face.  So when I checked in & the crew shows up and they introduce themselves to me she tells me her name.....And I see it on her ID badge.....I almost laughed out loud.  As much as it killed me, I kept my mouth shut & continued on because I had NO choice. Thankfully, I had (apparently) flown with this captain before & he knows my mother well from when she used to work for my company.  This was reassuring to me-I knew he'd have my back if anything happened.

Everything was fine, except all this girl could talk about was that she just moved back to this city with her boyfriend while he finishes med school and he's graduating & finds out next week where he'll be doing his residency and he's going to be a doctor.....I could practically see dollar signs in her eyes.  It made me sick actually.  Did she honestly not know who I was?

Well it gets better....I asked her how her boyfriend feels about her being a flight attendant & we talked about how its tough and how both of our boyfriends are supportive of it.  I mentioned that my ex (without using his name of course) hated me being a flight attendant and would talk badly about any girl in their 20's with a college education who chose to be one & used to discourage me from enjoying it.  She asked what he did & I said "He's a pilot at our airline"  She asked if we met in my base & I explained that we met when I was based elsewhere, but he was based in this base (hers) at that time.  Her response "He must have had a bad experience with a flight attendant then." Yes he did- I told her that he had broken up with his girlfriend of 5 years for a Flight Attendant only to discover she wouldn't leave her boyfriend for him and that he wasn't over it when he broke up with me.

Yes....I did say that.  And she didn't even realize the girl was HER!  She was like "Wow! That's no reason to put you down for being a flight attendant!  Sounds like he had lots of issues and you're better off."

I'm still in shock.....please tell me she was just playing it cool and that she's really not that stupid....At the end of the day- Truth will prevail, but its not my place to reveal it.  One day the truth will come out & she will be forced to deal with its consequences.   Had I not known about things with her & my ex, I would assume her to be a nicer girl than she looks.

But I guess in her case you really should judge a book by its cover....The whole time I kept saying to myself "seriously?! is this REALLY happening?!"

Such potential for drama.....thank GOD there was none, but thank GOD for the humor too.