Short Stories Collection

Good Friday

Note: This is an unedited draft. If you spot any editing issues on this short story, you're more than welcome to send feedback to me! Thank you for reading.

It was a sunny Friday, a great day to start Melanie's day as her first shift to be the First Class cabin head of her airline.

She had her breakfast at home, reached the airport with smooth traffic on the road and greeted by the security officer at the entrance to her airline office. Today will be a good day, she thought.

After all the preparations and setup done in the cabin, Melanie went to the First Class boarding gateway and waited for the guests. Although there would only be three passengers boarding First Class today for the flight from London to Kuala Lumpur, she had to make sure each of the passengers enjoyed the time on board throughout the flight.

20 minutes to the scheduled departure time at 10:10 AM, all the First Class passengers had boarded the plane and Melanie was busy coordinating her crew members in serving the guests. Suddenly, she heard some loud arguments at the boarding gate so she went out to have a look.

From the first sight, she saw an Asian guy who was sweating and panting heavily, face reddened with heated arguments with the crew member, Tim. He was holding a business handbag in one hand and his over-sized coat in another.

"I told you I was checked-in! I just don't know where my boarding pass is! Please let me in!" said the Asian guy with his face full of despair. Melanie approached them and asked Tim on the situation.

Tim moved a bit further from the Asian guy and told Melanie, "this guy lost his boarding pass, we couldn't let him in, could we?"

"Get his name and passport number so we can verify his status in the passenger list," instructed Melanie. Then she walked closer to the guy, who identified himself as Mr. Tang and tried to calm him down.

"Mr. Tang, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. My colleague, Tim is performing some checking on your status and will come back to us very soon. Thank you for your patience," said Melanie professionally.

"Thank you for your help as I really need to board the plane," said Mr. Tang while taking out a handkerchief from the pocket of his coat to wipe his sweat. His 300-pound body made him looked clumsy and seemed like he never stopped sweating.

As he turned around, Melanie spotted something in the back pocket of his pants. "Mr. Tang, could that be your boarding pass in the back pocket of your pants?" asked Melanie, pointing to his pants.

Mr. Tang struggled to reach into his back pocket and took out a piece of paper which apparently was the boarding pass that he thought was missing. "Oh yes! Here it is! I told you I was checked-in!" said Mr. Tang when handling the boarding pass which was wet and soaked in sweat to Tim.

Tim reluctantly stretched out his hand to take the boarding pass like it was contagious. After the verification has been done, Melanie offered to show Mr. Tang to his seat on the plane in Economy Class.

On his way to his seat, which was in the middle row, the passengers sitting at the aisle seats were annoyed by him as he almost accidentally hit each of them with either his handbag or his bum. He apologized along the way but still received harsh responses. Some passengers growled and some even cursed.