The first flight after training: what you remember, what you got wrong and what the purser said
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#1 Three weeks since my first flight and I still think about it every day, so I want to collect everyone's, because I suspect the details are universal and I suspect they are funnier with distance.
Mine
Edinburgh to Alicante. I had the door drill so rehearsed I could have done it in my sleep and then I forgot to check the girt bar on the first arming and the number one caught it, quietly, before anyone else saw. I did the safety demo with hands that were visibly shaking and a woman in 3C gave me a thumbs up. I dropped a tray of orange juices in the aisle on the trolley run and a passenger helped me pick them up. I forgot the PA for the landing cards and remembered it on final approach. And I cried in the galley on the return sector, which apparently is compulsory.
What the purser said at the end: 'You checked every seatbelt on the walk through. Nobody does that on their first flight. Well done.' I have kept that.
What I want
Your first flight: the route, the thing you got wrong, and what the senior crew member said that you kept. One each.
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#2 Dubai to Muscat, a short one, and I spilled a full tomato juice on a man in a white kandura. He was kinder about it than I would have been. The purser said 'that was the worst possible drink on the worst possible clothing and you handled him well, you will be fine'. I kept that.
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#3 Not yet. Two weeks to go. Reading this thread the way people read horror stories before bed.
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#4 Bristol to Faro. I did the entire demo with the demo life jacket on backwards. A child pointed it out. The number one said 'the child was right and you did not stop, that is the job'. Eight years ago.
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#5 JFK to Fort Lauderdale. I called the captain 'sir' four times in the briefing and he was 29. The purser said 'you will never make that mistake again and I have made worse'. She was right on both.
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#6 Lahore to Karachi, PIA. I forgot the demo entirely because the purser gestured to start and I thought she meant something else. She did it herself, then said 'now you have seen it done once, you do it next sector, and you will'. I did.
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#7 Krakow to Luton. I locked myself in the forward toilet for four minutes because I did not know the door. A colleague talked me out through the door. The number one's comment: 'Everyone does the toilet once. Yours was short.'
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#8 @amaliakrk the toilet is universal, I now know. Four minutes is respectable.
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#9 London to New York, 2012. I called the captain to a passenger who had fainted before checking whether she had, in fact, fainted. She had not. She was asleep. The captain came out, looked at her, looked at me, and went back. The purser said nothing for ten minutes, then said 'better that way round'. She was right. I still tell new crew that: better that way round.