Flight Attendant Freak Out -- Steven Slater is a Lucky Man

I can't imagine a much more stressful job than "flight attendant." First of all, I have to medicate whenever I fly because I have a totally irrational fear of flying. More specifically, my fear is of crashing. I understand that very few airplanes actually go down and even in those commercial flights that do crash, most people survive.

So right off the bat, I don't think I'd handle the job very well.

Then there's the fact that you have to deal with the general public, many of whom are, like me, stressed out about flying. They're not at their best.

And I've known flight attendants. They were cute, young women, so their experiences probably wouldn't mirror mine, but they had to deal with a lot of weird, horny men telling them things like "my seatbelt won't fasten properly; could you get it?" and "I've got something under my blanket."

And the groping and leering and etc.

Then there are the all-new, all-intrusive TSA regulations, including those airport scanners that take naked photos of you, and then store them. Those things will be appearing in every major airport now, thanks to homeland security director Eddie Izzard I mean Janet Napolitano.

So I think if I were a flight attendant, it would be only a matter of time before I flipped out. Sort of like what (apparently) happened to brand-new internet superstar Steven Slater. Apparently, someone told Mr. Slater to "f*ck off," and he got a little bit peeved.

"To the f-----g a--hole who told me to f--k off, it's been a good 28 years," Slater, 38, purred, cops said. "I've had it. That's it," he added, a passenger said.

The mad-as-hell steward grabbed a couple of brewskis and popped one open before activating the emergency exit, witnesses told airport employees.

After tossing his two carry-on bags on the slide, he followed them to the tarmac.

Slater - who actually first started working for airlines 20 years ago, not 28 - then walked to the AirTrain, stripped off his company tie and flung it off as bemused passengers watched.

"I wish we could all quit our jobs like that," said passenger Phil Catelinet, 36, of Brooklyn, who was on the flight and the AirTrain.

Ah, but if you "quit your job like that," would you get arrested?

Cops found him in bed with his boyfriend when they arrived to arrest him at a beachfront home in the Rockaways with a porch overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, sources said.
...
Slater was wearing a sheepish smile when Port Authority detectives walked him to a waiting van a few hours later. He was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief.

I suppose if you're messing with the airplane's emergency exit then you might be guilty of "reckless endangerment."

Steven Slater is a lucky man.

Anyway, given the fact that Mr. Slater was on an airplane and behaving erratically, things could have ended quite badly for him.

According to a witness, the man frantically ran down the aisle of the Boeing 757, flailing his arms, while his wife tried to explain that he was mentally ill and had not taken his medication.

The passenger indicated there was a bomb in his bag and was confronted by air marshals but ran off the aircraft, Doyle said. The marshals went after him and ordered him to get down on the ground, but he did not comply and was shot when he apparently reached into the bag, ["homeland security" department spokesman Brian] Doyle said.

Thanks to our hysteria over "security," airports have become dangerous places. Mr. Slater is pretty lucky that his "take this job and shove it" performance wasn't viewed by the wrong person. But it does give me an excuse to post a video of David Allan Coe singing a great song he wrote for Johnny Paycheck, "Take This Job and Shove it":



Steven Slater pic source.