I've been at Virgin over 5 years and I have to agree with Padder, quite spot on actually!
I am part time, so use the job for my own purposes, mainly to get a free trip to Abercrombie and Fitch each month! Certainly not for the money!
I couldn't do 6 flights a month, it was torture, and part time got me a life!
Virgin isn't a career, that's for sure and it designed mainly around a few years of fun in your early twenties, then they want you out!
However, the fun has been hard to come by these last couple of years.
High as a Kite, well done on the mortgage, it's no easy task when the salary of IFS, the highest rank you can achieve in Virgin, pays not much more than 17,000 pounds. And that can take 8 years!
Wait till you retire and see the pension! There basically isn't one, another way they design the job just for the young. It has long been a standing joke in the Industry how poorly paid and treated Virgin crew are, and it's true. I mean if Airtours are paid more, it must be bad!
Also High as a Kite, you cannot deny that the general opinion amongst most crew is that the Crew Line Manager position is an overpaid joke. I have many experiences of not being able to contact them due to 'training days', which means they are in Barbados!
When you do speak to them, it is only when they want to give you a hard time or find a reason not to pay you your pittance! They are no use when it comes to your own personal problems.
Also, you cannot deny that many groundstaff do all possible to find an excuse not to onload you on standby flights, or at least be EXTREMELY rude. And as Padder says, is it worth being upgraded as I too have experienced the cold end of the Upper Class service. There are also numerous memos on having to behave, as if we wouldn't! It's like being back at school.
The many friends that you mention are probably the crew from that best trip ever that you did and then they can't even remember your name by the next time you fly together, instead refering to you as 'darlin' until they get a sneak at your name badge! It's quite funny really. Don't tell me you haven't exchanged numbers and never heard from them again? Virgin is too big and impersonal to have good friends.
The crewing and rostering department are another famous joke, friends in BA stand back and laugh at the stories that they hear.
For the unknown, you won't have to stay in your room when you do a 20hour Cape Town night stop as it isn't worth saving the 30 quid that they pay you for the nightmare!
Turning up for your nice trip to Hong Kong will all go wrong when you have to hide under desks from the check in girls who will order you to go to Lagos or somwhere else you definitely DIDN'T pack for or take tablets for!
I have just returned from Hong Kong, one of the mose exciting cities in the world. The crew all went to bed, to save their allowances to go shopping at the markets! Padder is spot on again.
I have taken friends from BA on trips, had them sit in Economy and the crew are so bitchy to them. On a recent flight from LA, the IFS briefed the crew to watch out for some BA crew on holiday. "I want NO messing from them in 56 D E F and G" Why are they like that? BA crew are so nice to staff when we fly with them. We were told that the IFS would sort them out if they stepped out of line. They were the nicest passengers you could wish for, yet were treated like leppers!
I don't understand some of the things that go on in VIrgin. Padder is quite right about backstabbing and creeping to get fast tracked. It's awful. If your face fits, you do OK. If not, the HUGE turnover of crew is testament to all that Padder said!
Ask yourself why they are recruiting now after laying off 600 crew 7 months ago. Because people don't want to come back and the rest are so fed up that many are leaving. Good luck anyway! There is only one way to find out, as the many that leave Virgin will tell you!