Shall We Do Introductions? Meet Margaret, the Flight Attendant

I’m starting this new publication where I tell stories from my time as a flight attendant, starting in 2008. Some of these stories are exactly as they happened. Others will sound like I made them up—which is fair, because even now, they feel a little unreal. But they’re all true.

Almost 20 years ago, I became a brand new flight attendant at Delta Airlines. That part sounds clean and intentional. It wasn’t. It started in an airport.

On January 2nd, 2008, I was sitting alone in the Seattle airport for 12 hours after getting turned away at the Canadian border. I had been living (cough illegally) in Canada for three years—married a Canadian, working as a nanny under the table, building an idea of a life—and in the span of a few minutes, it was gone.

I literally had no job, no bank account, and no plan. Just… sitting there, stunned. Obviously, many tears were shed. It was devastating, but I'm a 'can-do' kinda girl. Not one to sit around and wait for life to happen to me.

At some point during those 12 hours, I opened my ancient laptop and started applying for jobs on Monster.com (remember her?). I applied to over a hundred jobs that day. I probably made a new resume that same day.

And then I saw it: Delta Airlines was hiring flight attendants. Specifically, French-speaking flight attendants.

(French-, along with Spanish-, Russian-, Hebrew-, Italian-, German-, Hungarian-, etc.-speaking flight attendants. They were on a huge hiring push, and I later found out it was the first time they'd hired in almost a decade. More on that later)

Now—did I speak French? Somewhat. I took eight years of French as my language elective through middle- and high-school. I lived in bilingual Canada (okay, on the English-speaking side of the country) for three years!

So did I actually speak French? No, not really.

Did that stop me? Absolutely not. I applied anyway.

A couple of weeks later, I was flown to Atlanta for an interview with hundreds of other hopefuls. At one point, they pulled a small group of us into a separate room and told us to be quiet, keep the cheering to a dull roar: We were the ones getting the job offer. We were going to be Delta Flight Attendants.

I started training in March 2008. And literally just like that, my life cracked open in an entirely different direction.

This publication isn’t a memoir.

I don’t want to tell these stories in a neat, chronological, buttoned-up way. That’s not how I experienced them, and let's be for real: it’s not as fun.

Instead, this is going to be a mix of things:

• Storytime posts (the kind you’d hear over drinks with friends)
• Flashbacks (shoes, uniforms, crash pad chaos, all the tiny details people who aren't in the industry don't know but are curious about)
• Dating stories (because… wow. Do you remember OK Cupid and Match.com? I do, and it was WILD to be young and single in those days!)
• Behind-the-scenes airline life
• Training experiences
• And eventually, short fictional stories

Because here’s the thing: I’ve wanted to write mystery novels for a long time. Think flight attendant meets Nancy Drew. A little Agatha Christie, a little chaos, a lot of “how did this even happen?” So this is where that starts.

You’ll meet Margaret.

Margaret is… me, but also not me.

When I became a flight attendant, Delta put our legal names on our wings. I had always gone by Maigen since I was a baby (because Margaret is such an old lady name for a child), but suddenly I was Margaret. And somewhere along the way, that became a kind of persona—someone who could handle anything, smile through anything, and exist just slightly separate from my real life.

Being a flight attendant allowed me to step into this cloak of poise and power that Maigen just didn't have.

Margaret is the one who walks into the story.

And trust me—there are A LOT of stories.

Layovers in glamorous (and not-so-glamorous) places. Crash pads in New York. Being broke as hell (I made $16,000 my first year—yes, really). Meeting famous people. Dealing with grown adults acting like toddlers at 35,000 feet.

It was messy. It was ridiculous. It was absolutely unforgettable. It was an incredible experience over six years. And when I left I deleted my Twitter and Facebook accounts because some of the stories those posts told were more scandalous than I wanted my next husband to know about.

And every time I tell even one of these stories, someone says: “You should write a book.” So… this is me doing that. Just not all at once.

I have this crazy idea that we’ll build it together.

I think some posts will feel like journal entries. Some will feel like scenes from a novel. Some might turn into actual fiction. And somewhere in all of this, a series of stories is going to emerge.

I’m already having way too much fun thinking about all the ways a murder could happen around a flight attendant. So if you’re into stories that feel a little chaotic, a little too real, and occasionally unbelievable—you’re in the right place.

Let’s see where this goes.