Immediately after I published 'Sell Jumpseatnews for 1500?', I received several letters that helped to shed some light on what was going on.

The first letter was from Jason McAllister, ORDSW, who provided some info on the fact that it the whole thing was actually an internet scam. This is pretty scary, actually. Had, say, I been stupid enough to sell the jumpseatnews.com domain for $1,500.00, what would have happened next would really really have sucked:

"They pay. You transfer. They dispute the charge. Or they pay with a stolen CC. You get zilch and a frozen PayPal account and they get a free domain."

Could you imagine some wacko-ebay-paypal-scammer scumbag owning Jumpseatnews? What a nightmare that would have been.

Next came a letter from George Rosette, SFOSW, the moderator of the Flight Attendant Communication Center. And get this, he received almost the exactly same email---only they were offering him $5.00 for the F/A CC. That's funny because he doesn't even own the originating domain name. Rather Ezboard, Inc. does. Besides, $5.00 for the F/A CC is a friggin insult if you ask me.

OR so I thought!  He was actually kidding about receiving the email!  Had a good laugh on that one...

Here's a great story about George: He was the Purser on what is still one of my favorite trips ever worked at UAL. December 24, 1996 and SFOSW Crew Desk was short a crew to work a Hong Kong flight. So, they pulled out a bunch of new-hires (fresh with Training Center Mock-Up smell on them), including Yours Truly, to work the trip. Not just any new-hires; new hires that had never worked an international fight in our lives. In fact, I had only a few weeks prior dumped several pots of coffee down the drain (or lack of drain thereof) in the back of the 727 going to Boise, Idaho. We were understaffed by 5 or 6 and the flight was completely full. Good ole George volunteered to be the Purser.

But poor George. We had no idea what the hell to do with 3/4 of the clutter boarded in the galley. I worked the upper deck (first time I had even really been up in that neck of the woods) with some other like-minded new-hire. Since I had no idea what to do, I remember putting some playing cards, kiddie kits with wing thingys, and nuts or something on the queen cart and taking that through the aisle. It was only a few minutes before prep for landing that someone pointed out that there were unused items like tea pots, towels, and other international SERVICE ITEMS buried in the back of the galley compartments that actually were there to be used and served on the flight! I felt like an idiot, but learned a lot on that one. And the passengers got a real kick out of the stressed-out new guy making a complete fool out of himself.

What I remember most, though, was how calm and patient George was. Not only did the flight go well, but all of us deadheaded home in First Class. And on Christmas! We all got Holiday and Understaffing pay that, to a new hire in 1996, was like finding the Hide-A-Key to Fort Knox.

It was one of those trips that... well, you know. It was one of those trips.