A Delta passenger shared an interesting experience on Reddit, which got me thinking…
Delta flight attendant insists milk is for coffee and tea
A traveler was flying with Delta from Rome (FCO) to New York (JFK), sitting next to a “pretty geeky kid” who was in his late teens or early 20s. Around halfway through the flight, warm chocolate chip cookies were served, and then this happened:
This kid asks if they have any milk on the cart, to which this particular flight attendant says “no,” very tersely. The kid says “okay, I’ll have…” but before he can finish, the other flight attendant hands our rude flight attendant a bottle of milk and my seat mate is poured a cup of milk.
As the flight attendant moves on from our row, he turns back to this kid and says “JUST SO YOU KNOW, the MILK is for COFFEE AND TEA, NOT a GROWN MAN who wants some MILK with his COOKIE!” This kid is stunned silent for a moment and says, a little sheepishly, “I have a cookie, I like it better with milk.”
In the moment, I laughed a little at the absurdity of the whole thing, but I’ve been thinking about it since and I was kind of mad. The kid didn’t do anything wrong. He made a slightly weird request, sure, but not so weird that it merited that response. Thoughts?
This seems ridiculous, but I have some questions
Okay, so the Delta flight attendant here seems bizarrely combative and rude. That certainly doesn’t sound like “the Delta difference” that the airline likes to tout. I can’t imagine treating a passenger that way, so I hope this passenger at least sends a note to the airline to report the flight attendant’s behavior, so that it’s in his file, in case it’s a pattern of bad behavior.
That being said, this raises an interesting question — is there any truth to what the flight attendant was saying, or was he being a jerk completely baselessly?
While it’s not so common nowadays, going back 10-15 years, it was totally common for airlines to specifically serve warm cookies with glasses of milk for dessert. You wouldn’t be weird for having that combination, but instead, you’d be weird to scoff at it. So yeah, cookies and milk aren’t just for kids, but at least going back a decade, were also for grown adults in premium cabins.
So, is ordering milk as a drink on a plane strange in any way? I had a look back at some of the premium cabin menus I’ve had in recent times, and menus seem split as to whether or not they list milk as a beverage. For example, on my recent American business class flight, milk is listed on the beverage menu…
…while on a recent Delta business class flight, milk wasn’t listed on the beverage menu.
That’s not to say that Delta doesn’t have milk onboard, but instead, I guess the airline doesn’t generally view it as a standalone beverage. Is that deliberate, in the sense that Delta caters less milk per passenger than American, for example, or does the airline just assume that people don’t want to drink it?
Regardless, the attitude the flight attendant had with the passenger seems unacceptable. There should be nothing controversial about ordering a cup of milk with a warm chocolate chip cookie. And if the airline truly didn’t cater enough, then there’s a polite way to explain that to a passenger, rather than trying to make them feel bad.
Bottom line
A Delta flight attendant reportedly scolded a passenger on a transatlantic flight for ordering a cup of milk with the warm chocolate chip cookie being served. The flight attendant claimed that milk is only for coffee and tea, and not intended as a standalone drink.
While I can understand milk may be loaded in limited quantities, that’s the first time that I’ve heard that. Interestingly, though, Delta menus don’t seem to list milk as a drink, while American menus do list milk as a drink. I’m not sure to what extent that’s deliberate, and if it really reflects different amounts of milk being loaded.
What do you make of this Delta milk and cookie saga?
