I make a habit of being nice to the flight crew on airplanes. This is mostly out of the politeness my parents taught me, but also because I recognize the staff as humans with lives. Today I'm taking a "nonstop" flight with a stop at a different airport, and so got to interact with the same head stewardess twice. She's distinctly more well off than I am, listening to her talk about her life, but she's not snotty or uppity about it. I should point out that I am not personally engaging her in much conversation, but merely listening in to other passengers do the hard work of not sucking at talking, pausing, being entertaining, making the correct faces, and thinking of good responses.
So that aside, this is Southwest Airlines, where they pointedly do things differently than every other airline and make jokes about it too. One of those things done differently is consistently friendlier staff and better service. I presume being allowed to snark at your passengers and make lighthearted comments about deadly serious safety protocols is good for the soul.
This is the second flight, and so I've received my second dose of apple juice and second round of snacks. They offer both peanuts and pretzels here, which makes me worry about people with peanut allergies. But I vastly prefer peanuts to pretzels, so even when they hand out one of each, I'm happy enough. Recently the head stewardess came by with seconds for snacks, and all that was left were pretzels. Now, when I get home, I'm going to get a ride from the wife of a friend who loves pretzels, so I accepted with a yes please and standard thank you, figuring I could send them with the wife as an apology for co-opting their together time. I put away the extra pretzels and settled down. Not a minute later, and I hear, "would you pass those to her?" and I was promptly handed two more packets of pretzels. Of course I said thank you, because there was no reason other than generousity that she would be passing me more pretzels.
I don't really hate pretzels, but I really wish they'd leave them out of snack mixes. A couple jobs ago, I had a small snack drawer and all my snack mixes seemed to come with pretzels. Sometimes two kinds of pretzels, if they're being sneaky. I got into a friendly disagreement with my friend about the existence of those pretzels in my snack mix, which finally ended with me saving all the pretzels from several months of snacks, mine and my coworkers', into a gallon bag. I then snuck the bag onto their porch and messeged them five minutes later to find the surprise. Suffice it to say, my friend was thoroughly amused and thankful for the bounty of pretzels.
So now I have four packets of pretzels from the airline. I think I'll tape them together, give them to her, and tell her that this is all her fault, because if it weren't for pretzel-loving people like her, they'd just serve peanuts like sane people.*
*Yes, I'm kidding. Yes, she'll know I'm kidding. Please don't kill me, people with peanut allergies. The pretzels made me do it!
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