T_richard -
I think our role as cabin crew would be extremely boring without the occasional rude or inappropriate customer! Flight attendants are the kind of people who thrive on interaction with others. I guess we have to take the good with the bad. For every rude pax we have 90 pleasant ones and 10 or so great ones. Although like every job we do have flights from Hell where there seems to be no one with manners. And having mostly nice customers doesn't make it any easier when dealing with a particularly rude one. Hence we turn to humour and each other to deal with it.
Many thanks for promising to be nice
Now - if we could just get the millions of other air travellers on side...
Having said the above there is of course really really snarly cabin crew out there too. As a colleague we cannot tell them due to the close environment we work in. Makes it difficult. So by all means report them to the airline. Recently I apologised to a couple of pax for a flight attendant's rudeness and behaviour (she was unbelievably rude!) and it landed me in trouble. Turns out my company would prefer us to 'dob' each other in to management. That would not be conducive to working closely with complete strangers if you ask me.