This review originally appeared in The Beach Reporter (by Annie Lubinsky)
This month, “Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet” appeared in bookstores, and it also made a couple of appearances on the New York Times best sellers list.
Probably because everyone can relate to travel, airplanes and flight attendants, whether they love them or hate them.
“People love to share the bad experiences,” Poole said. “The good stories are great and I have a million of them, but people love to hear the bad stories.”
In her 15 years as a flight attendant, Poole has dealt with passengers who got naked, drunk or disoriented from sleeping pills. She’s worked with crew members who were kind, cruel or quirky. Throughout “Cruising Attitude,” Poole keeps her sense of humor in the forefront as she describes the intense training flight attendants go through, reassures readers about turbulence and reveals truths about how flight crews spend their off-duty hours – it’s not the party people think it is.
“From my blog, I was just shocked at how many people were commenting with the same questions and misconceptions and funny ideas they had about flight attendants,” Poole said, “and how many blog posts can I write addressing the same question? So I thought I’d just write a book and correct all the things people have wrong and the funny ideas people have about us, and show it how it is.”
As she was writing her book and Tweeting about it, followers asked her if she was going to bash passengers.
“If I bash passengers, who’s going to read my book?” she said. “I wanted to make it as light and fun as I could, because I want passengers to like it. And the other thing was being true to flight attendants. I don’t want to come off syrupy sweet, like I’m the perfect flight attendant. I also break, mess up, spill drinks, get tired and frustrated after six days of work, so I wanted to be true to them and give people a better understanding of what our lives are like.”
Heather Poole 
Just finished your book. You are a hero, heather!!! Book was great fun to read and you’ve given me a new found respect for flight attendants everywhere!!!
Dear Heather: I thought you might like to know why I bought your book! I completed a degree in Sociology a year ago and was in the car last week, listening to the CBC interview you did. You were talking about how peoples’ attitudes and personalities seemed to change in the confines of a plane. You suggested that it was possibly the factor of anonymity that made them feel they could behave as they pleased – because they would never see these same people again. As I listened, I thought that this was an excellent example of the sociology of group behaviour and wanted to learn more. I came home and immediately ordered from Amazon.ca. My book arrived today and I am looking forward to an interesting read.
REALLY? That is so nice to hear! I hate listening to myself, so I very rarely turn in to the interviews after it’s all said and done. But now I’m going to have to listen to that one. THanks for sharing. Hope you like the book.