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W ell here I am: 54B. My knees are neatly tucked under my chin and I’m trying to shrink into myself so I don’t spill over into the next seat. The armrests are digging into my elbows; the person immediately in front of me has reclined her seat inches from my lap. The sickening odor of exhaust wafts through the air. A loud whistling noise accompanies the shaking and shuddering of my seat effectively drowning out any attempts at speech.

Welcome aboard Flight 517 and thanks for flying Ameri-delt UniLines!

After this recent experience flying the unfriendly skies I am left feeling like a criminal. For it is I who sends people off on a daily basis to spend hours in the cramped quarters of a flying sardine can. To quote the great cartoon philosopher Charles Brown…“Good grief!”

You see in my other incarnation I’m a travel agent. I specialize in group trips to Israel but in essence I’m an accessory to aeronautical misery. Please forgive me. A girl’s gotta make a living.

However in an attempt to defend myself I will lay out for you what my work is like and all the skills needed to succeed in this field. And I warn you… it isn’t pretty.

Typical Day at the Office

The workday starts as usual: I stride into the office an hour late schlepping my computer bag and a huge sack of food. I’m starting a new diet. Again. And it’s very restrictive. So I have to bring along a lot of extra food. ’Cuz I’m gonna be hungry.

I breeze through the outer office only stopping at two or three desks along the way to tell each coworker the latest “you will not believe this” story that occurred since I last saw them. I zoom past the office manager yelling over my shoulder about power outages and their effect on alarm clocks urgent calls from my mother’s visiting nurse and the guy from O & R Utilities. As I plug my computer into the power strip and attach it to the additional monitor I ask my assistant for an update: “So who hates me today?”