Times gone by
In the mid eighties (1986 to be precise) whilst I was a ramp despatcher in a previous life the various Iron Curtain airlines (as they were then) - Balkan, Tarom, JAT, Inex Adria and Aviogenex to name the ones I dealt with - seemed to have a policy of the most junior cabin crew member dealing with such things. Of course this was totally unrelated to the desire of the rest of the crew to get to WH Smith to buy as much chocolate as possible before the outbound flight. On one memorable occasion a JAT crew didn't return to the aircraft until 10 minutes after the scheduled departure time (queues at the checkout?) - I was used to putting out calls for remaining passengers, but getting calls put out for the crew was a bit unusual! To really rub it in I had the front steps removed so they all had to go up the rear stairs and walk the length of the aircraft (it was a 727) just so they got to see how unimpressed the passengers were.
Just goes to show how times change, in this case for the better I suspect.