My work takes me to lots of remote and far-flung places. As a result, I am often travelling with domestic airlines in small countries that not many people know of. I am aware of certain international aviation rules that all airlines must follow, though, no exceptions.

I call the attendant to my seat.

Me: “Excuse me. I’ve been smelling cigarette smoke for about twenty minutes now. I’m definitely not imagining it.”

Flight Attendant: “Did you have a question?”

Me: “Uh… could you find out who is smoking and make them stop? It’s not legal.”

The attendant looks confused but nods and seems to check the whole cabin. They don’t return to me, so I assume they found the culprit and told them to stop, but half an hour later, I can smell the cigarettes again. I call over the attendant again and explain.

Flight Attendant: “Oh, yes, I checked. The pilots are smoking.”

They tell me this as if this is an acceptable answer.

Me: “Uh… that’s not a great answer.”

Flight Attendant: “Well… it’s to help them with their hangovers.”

Absolutely none of this was said in jest. I did not fly with them on the way back.

I work at a wild game lodge as a tour guide, helping tourists see the wild animals in Africa. The animals are fairly used to cars traveling in their territory. Sometimes lions will wander over to sit in the shade provided by the jeep, and in another area, a cheetah will often find our jeep a really cool place to hop onto for a good vantage point.

This, of course, nerds the tourists out and they love it, though they’re under strict orders not to leave the vehicles or touch the cheetah — yes, even if it’s right there.

One day, a particularly… uneducated… tourist, began asking me questions.

Tourist: “So, like, do giraffes hunt in packs to take down their prey?”

I admit, I had to word my answer carefully because the question made my brain hurt. Thankfully, we were trained to answer stupidity as though addressing the whole group. 

Me: “So, uh, fun fact for everyone: you may have heard about a ‘pack’ of wolves, which is commonly known. There is also a ‘pride’ of lions, a ‘tower’ of giraffes, and, for fun, a ‘crash’ of rhinos.”

This sparked a few laughs, and I continued.

Me: “Giraffes are also herbivores and don’t hunt. Instead, they graze on treetops.”

I gestured to the herbivores in question, who were munching away and sticking out long tongues to snag leaves.

Tourist: “But don’t their long necks help them reach birds in the trees? Isn’t that what their long tongues are for?”

Me: “Folks, if you’ll look closely, you’ll spot birds perched all over some of the giraffes. Red-billed and yellow-billed oxpeckers, or tickbirds, have a symbiotic relationship with giraffes. This means that rather than being enemies, the birds and giraffes get along fine, and even help each other. The oxpeckers eat ticks and parasites off the giraffes, and the giraffes are relieved of blood-sucking, disease-carrying parasites. The giraffe’s long tongues are to help them reach leaves that are just out of reach.”

Tourist: “But…”

Me: “Now, one animal that we probably won’t get to see is the aardvark, because they are active at night. They use long and sticky tongues to catch ants and termites. If you look at the back of your pamphlet, you’ll see a picture that one of the local researchers managed to catch of an aardvark.”

The tourist’s questions did not improve. No, porcupines cannot shoot quills at you. Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand; they drop their whole body to the ground to be less visible. Their heads and necks just camouflage against the earth, making them look like they are buried. Yes, actually, we’ve tried laser pointers and catnip for fun. Sadly, neither of those impresses the lions. No, humanity did NOT teach lions to eat meat instead of letting them live peaceful herbivorous lives.

Blessedly, I was able to field the questions, and most of the rest of the tour group thanked me for the information. I was also complimented on my restraint in not smacking the annoying tourist upside the head with a rolled-up pamphlet. It had become clear that their questions were being deliberately obtuse. By the end, I’m pretty sure my left eye was twitching.

I was glad that most of the tour group was made up of decent folks because I think I would have snapped if I had to deal with more than one per group. 

Funnily enough, that particular tourist was very quiet for the rest of the group’s visit.

I worked in Africa as an operations manager for a large global security company from 2009 to 2014.

The country I was working in had been through a long civil war and was very underdeveloped — think no paved roads, and people living a very traditional African lifestyle. At the time, I’d been working there on a rotation of ten weeks in the country and two weeks at home for about four years.

I’d flown to and from work so often that I had the journey down to the bare-minimum travel time, and it worked out as the cheapest option for the company because travel days were paid from when I left home. The shorter my journey was, the cheaper it worked out for the company.

Someone in the head office looked at cutting down on travel costs, probably to make themselves look good and get promoted. As a result, I got an email after a week at home saying they had changed my normal flight, which was at 5:00 pm on Sunday from my nearest UK airport, via Amsterdam, then on to Nairobi, Kenya, connecting with a 9:00 am flight to [Country] on Monday morning. The change was from a 5:00 pm departure to a 5:00 am departure the same day, using the same route and saving about £80.

To clarify, the 9:00 am flight from Nairobi was the first flight to [Country] because the destination airport was the only surfaced runway in the country. It had no runway lights or radar, so all flights had to be in daylight.

I agreed to the flight time change, but they had to move it to Monday so I wouldn’t lose a day at home. They agreed because they still saved £80 on the ticket — no skin off their nose.

Once I got the flight confirmation, I contacted the travel desk asking for hotel and taxi bookings. When they asked why I needed these, I explained that a 5:00 am departure required a check-in at 3:00 am, so I needed a hotel at the airport on Sunday night because no trains were running to get me the three hours to the airport from home at that time of the morning.

The flights they booked would get me into Nairobi at 7:00 pm — after dark — so I’d need a hotel there and a taxi each way to and from the hotel to get me onto the 9:00 am flight on Tuesday — the same flight I would have been on if I’d left at 5:00 pm but a day later.

A couple of days went by, and I got a phone call from the company travel desk telling me the travel plan was confirmed. I was on the 5:00 am flight with a hotel reservation at my UK airport the night before and a hotel in Nairobi after landing, and the taxi would collect me in Nairobi and drop me at the airport for my final connection.

I asked about the cost savings and they said it was £80. I then asked about the hotels and taxis. They replied, “Oh, they don’t come out of our budget; that’s the operations budget, so you’re fine.”

I was happy. I was arriving back at work a day later, still paid the same amount, with a night out in Nairobi to sweeten the deal.

My boss, on the other hand, went nuts! Nobody had told him about the changes. My deputy flew out on the plane I flew in on, meaning I didn’t get a handover of the work that was going on. On top of that, the cost of hotels, taxis, and an extra day’s pay had all come out of my boss’s operational budget.

I think the total amount added was almost £1,000, but hey, they saved £80 on the flight cost!