Why serve in the first place?

Each time I make a trip to my home in Siliguri, I normally take a connecting flight to bagdogra. So it’s Mumbai-Kolkata-Bagdogra. The distance between Mumbai and Kolkata is covered within 2 hrs 15 mins (only by Jet Airways) and that between Kolkata and Bagdogra within 45 mins (again, only by Jet airways). I am not too bothered about other airlines anyways. I would rather cancel my trip than travel by any other airline (you call this brand loyalty //winking. If only companies paid you for being this loyal //wish)

Anyways, what I am talking about here is ‘Why serve in the first place?’

This is not the first time this thought has come to my mind. It comes invariably each time I am on the Kolkata-Bagdogra flight. 45 minutes to serve freshners followed by drinks followed by a main course followed by coffee/tea (whichever you prefer) followed by sweets besides the safety instructions, collecting donations for the NGO they support, distributing suggestions’ slip and later collecting it, checking if passengers have their seat belts on…yes they have been trained to carry these out. Fine! But, all within 45 minutes? It’s insane.

My focus at the moment is just on the food they serve. They always serve lovely food. Today they had parantha, palak kofta, rajma and rice besides salad, brownie and frooti.
They get less than 30 minutes to serve food to approx. 174 passengers. These 30 minutes include the time for them to collect the leftovers. Why am I whining about it? I am not the one on gas. I am not the one being pressurized to perform. I am not the one whose job is at stake. Why do I care? I care, may be not about them. But I do care about myself. Before I’ve had even a few bites of the yummy food, she/he is there to collect the food tray. Why this early? I haven’t even tasted the kofta leave aside the yummy dessert. And the salad and the frooti? (I am by no chance a glutton nor am I too fond of food). What I see is when these air stewards come to collect the food tray they are equally embarrassed for forcing you to hurry up. They can see you haven’t even kind of started. Yet they are bound by time.

I will mostly happily agree on something which I get to finish than on something which is so elaborate that all I do is have my mouth water, something which I never fully get to relish. Why don’t they just serve a quickie – a veg/non-veg puff and a brownie or something alike. That’s about it. It’ll save them so much of a hassle and atleast the passenger wouldn’t feel disappointed about not being able to finish their meal.

Hmmmmn? Makes sense?