Do not dismiss flight attendants lightly, in their own element they are suprisingly observant!
Why thank you Wino....... Too much honour I'm sure.
This rule is just another one in a series of un-enforcable rules handed down by people who do not care about what actually happens in the cabin of a civil airliner. All they are interested in is covering their collective @rses.
We already have the rule that no passenger may be in a galley without an FA present. With the toilet on the 737 located in the front galley, enforcing this rule would mean that service to pax in the front of the ac would be interrupted continuously to the point of it becoming non-existent.
As cabin crew we can pick. Either we serve the pax the food & drink they expect and which management tells us to serve, or we enforce the rule the way management tells us to. We can't do both.
Management knows this. Management also knows that we will in fact serve the food (to avoid getting lynched by the full fare paying pax at the front of the AC) instead of spending the entire flight in the front galley keeping pax company while they wait in line for the toilet.
Putting in an extra FA to make the rule workable, would cost money and is therefore a no-no. But being seen to have made a rule is what counts.
They have put in place a rule, so they are safety conscious and comply with all USA directives. Should anything happen, the blame can be seemlessly transferred to the the stupid stewardesses who do not have enough brains to realise that safety of course always comes before serving food.
Neat, isn't it?
This new impossible-to-enforce rule will not improve airline safety.
But all backsides are decorously covered and that's what counts. 