"I imagine Essie as a subtle and moderately skilled cutlery thief"
December 18, 2021 5:02 PM Subscribe
Archaeologist Gabe Moshenka says "This short ‘presentation’ in linked tweets is a mini-investigation of my late grandmother’s collection of stolen airline cutlery and the life stories it might tell". Threadreader unroll and original tweet. Moshenka also links to A Mini-History of Modern International Aviation as Told in Stolen Spoons by Dennis Schaal, and Why airlines should invest in branded #PinchablePaxEx soft product by John Walton.
My mom was more pedestrian. She collected matchbooks. From everywhere. All the time. Every trip. When cleaning out their possessions, I finally got her collection together into a single heap. There was enough flammable, combustible material there to burn down a city block...
posted by jim in austin at 6:04 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by jim in austin at 6:04 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
my father was in the Navy when he married mom so all his buddies higraded place settings of cutlery from the commissary. i still have a U.S.N. spoon ant fork that i use.
posted by wmo at 6:16 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by wmo at 6:16 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
I worked overseas for ten years and took air flights about once a month to and from various conferences. It was back in the era when alcoholic beverages were complimentary. (Thank you British Air!) I started a collection of little unopened booze bottles from those flights.
Little green Tanqueray Gin bottles, aquamarine blue Bombay Sapphire bottles, frosted Limoncello bottles. They were like little jewels!
Even after the airlines started charging for them, I often found a way to pinch one when the Flight Attendant wasn’t looking (or, at least, pretended not to see).
Not being much of a drinker, I had collected something like sixty of them at the end of the decade I worked abroad. Not wishing to carry them back to the US with me when I finally relocated stateside, I offered them to my then-Pastor and his wife, who accepted them all enthusiastically.
posted by darkstar at 6:53 PM on December 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
Little green Tanqueray Gin bottles, aquamarine blue Bombay Sapphire bottles, frosted Limoncello bottles. They were like little jewels!
Even after the airlines started charging for them, I often found a way to pinch one when the Flight Attendant wasn’t looking (or, at least, pretended not to see).
Not being much of a drinker, I had collected something like sixty of them at the end of the decade I worked abroad. Not wishing to carry them back to the US with me when I finally relocated stateside, I offered them to my then-Pastor and his wife, who accepted them all enthusiastically.
posted by darkstar at 6:53 PM on December 18, 2021 [3 favorites]
Lufthansa's metal sporks were the perfect size and weight for a small toddler learning to eat by themselves. Or so I've been told.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:18 PM on December 18, 2021
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:18 PM on December 18, 2021
I might have a couple of United blankets, and we've got a Delta juice glass that i think came from a yard sale. I don't actually use the blankets at home, not sure why I had the impulse to pinch them in the first place.
posted by wintermind at 7:46 PM on December 18, 2021
posted by wintermind at 7:46 PM on December 18, 2021
Why: Because fuck United Airlines.
posted by Windopaene at 8:37 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Windopaene at 8:37 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
Because fuck United Airlines.
Wild guess: you've flown with a wheelchair?
posted by away for regrooving at 10:16 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
Wild guess: you've flown with a wheelchair?
posted by away for regrooving at 10:16 PM on December 18, 2021 [1 favorite]
The comment by John Walton at the end about taking pillows or blankets as a favor to the airline were interesting. I've snagged the odd blanket or pillow, but with one exception, only to make sure I had them as soon as I boarded my connecting flight rather than waiting for them to be handed out; they've never been quality enough to keep for off-airplane life. The blankets are tiny, and the pillows have about as much floof as a makeup remover pad. I always assumed that the low quality indicated that they were meant to be taken for such a purpose; they couldn't cost more than a couple bucks each. Certainly it never occurred to me to hide that I was taking it, and the flight attendants never batted an eye.
The one exception, a pillow from Air France, wasn't an exception because it was any better, it was because I was a Peace Corps volunteer and lived in a country where using pillows was just not much a part of the culture, and when you did find one, it was just a scrap cloth bag stuffed with other pieces of scrap cloth. So in other words, the highest praise I can give airline pillows is that they are at least sometimes better than a bag of rags.
posted by solotoro at 11:32 PM on December 18, 2021
The one exception, a pillow from Air France, wasn't an exception because it was any better, it was because I was a Peace Corps volunteer and lived in a country where using pillows was just not much a part of the culture, and when you did find one, it was just a scrap cloth bag stuffed with other pieces of scrap cloth. So in other words, the highest praise I can give airline pillows is that they are at least sometimes better than a bag of rags.
posted by solotoro at 11:32 PM on December 18, 2021
SAS blankets at least used to have a good weave, nice colors and big blocky patterns and are great to pack along in a daybag for improvised picnics. And Air France has had nice mini down-filled pillows great for those traveling with infants. I never considered taking these as stealing but rather part of the cost of a trans-Atlantic flight.
posted by St. Oops at 2:22 AM on December 19, 2021
posted by St. Oops at 2:22 AM on December 19, 2021
If you book a 1st (roomette) or 2nd class (Pullman) a/c sleeper on a Thai train, you get a pristine sheet-sized white towel as a blanket. It comes wrapped in dry-cleaner-weight plastic and when you tear it open it’s still warm from the dryer (or more likely from sitting out in Bangkok’s torrid heat). It’s the most perfect blanket, light, snuggly…I’ve wanted one for years but would never dare to steal it.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:04 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by TWinbrook8 at 6:04 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm trying to remember the last time I saw branded metal cutlery on a flight. I'm sure some of it stopped being offered after 9/11, although I'd also guess general cost-cutting might be a bigger factor. And of course, the chance you'll be served something that needs utensils is shrinking every month, even in first/business class.
I've spotted wooden utensils for 'sustainability' on at least one flight.
I still have a swank little Italian leather bag from a Qatar Airways business class flight, from the one time I flew "top of the line" internationally. It was originally full of travel goodies. The little tube of moisturizer was amazing. But I don't think their forks and spoons had the company logo on them.
posted by gimonca at 6:53 AM on December 19, 2021
I've spotted wooden utensils for 'sustainability' on at least one flight.
I still have a swank little Italian leather bag from a Qatar Airways business class flight, from the one time I flew "top of the line" internationally. It was originally full of travel goodies. The little tube of moisturizer was amazing. But I don't think their forks and spoons had the company logo on them.
posted by gimonca at 6:53 AM on December 19, 2021
Among the items in my kitchen's utensil drawer is a small collection of classic Eastern Airlines stainless steel cutlery. My grandparents lived in suburban Miami right down the street from Frank Borman, the Apollo astronaut who became CEO of Eastern in the 1980s. It was a somewhat fancy neighborhood, but my grandfather, who came from working-class roots, never lost his propensity for grabbing potentially valuable items from other people's trash. I'm pretty sure he salvaged the Eastern utensils from Borman's curb on garbage day. They came into my possession when I started college in the early '90s, and my grandparents gave me a bunch of kitchenware. It's pretty cool to have them, knowing that they are not only a beautiful piece of midcentury modern design, and a physical relic of a long-defunct airline, but that they used to belong to its chief executive, who incidentally flew around the moon in an earlier phase of his career.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:25 AM on December 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 9:25 AM on December 19, 2021 [5 favorites]
My mother, of late blessed memory, developed the ambition to entirely furnish the household in stolen branded housewares. Once we had been contented with mustard glasses, Schwartz brand, printed with hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, or the stuff you got with box tops plus postage and handling, or from out of the large box of detergent that had one item of Melmac in each, but now anything purchased, or given as a freebie didn't count. It had to be stolen.
Her ambition first developed into successful fruition during the seventies when she was working in the accounting department of the Ritz Carleton Hotel. Their thick china plates had a pink garland swag decoration around the rim. The cutlery was silver plate. It took awhile because she could only bring home what she used when she had lunch or coffee break by putting it into her bag instead of onto the busboys cart, so small bread and butter plates and coffee cups were the first things to arrive in quantity. I don't think we ever ended up with a full set of dinner plates.
Our towels were prominently branded with YWCA in red, one doubled as the bathroom curtain. One of our other curtains took her half the night on an overnight Amtrak train to Boston to pinch. She kept wandering down towards the end of the car but there was always someone awake. It was the divider between the seating area and a service area that included the the toilet. She got it into her bag before dawn and must have been very sleepy the next day.
Hospitals as it turned out where not a good place for plunder as it turned out, not because it wasn't easy to swipe stuff, but because she turned her nose up at anything that wasn't branded. Their linen was almost entirely generic but she still managed to obtain examples with markings from both the Montreal General Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital.
She was never caught, or possibly anyone who did catch her flinched at the idea of confronting anyone so brazen. She had a moral code, of sorts. She wouldn't have dreamed of stealing library books and would have looked with horror and revulsion at anyone who did. Shoplifting only happened much later in life when her finances and mental health were in tatters. But at that time her target was anything with company branding on it, placed prominently enough to discourage theft - the branding made it a sort of challenge to her. They bet she wouldn't steal anything marked so obviously that it was obviously stolen if you saw it off the premises, and she accepted the bet.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:26 AM on December 19, 2021 [14 favorites]
Her ambition first developed into successful fruition during the seventies when she was working in the accounting department of the Ritz Carleton Hotel. Their thick china plates had a pink garland swag decoration around the rim. The cutlery was silver plate. It took awhile because she could only bring home what she used when she had lunch or coffee break by putting it into her bag instead of onto the busboys cart, so small bread and butter plates and coffee cups were the first things to arrive in quantity. I don't think we ever ended up with a full set of dinner plates.
Our towels were prominently branded with YWCA in red, one doubled as the bathroom curtain. One of our other curtains took her half the night on an overnight Amtrak train to Boston to pinch. She kept wandering down towards the end of the car but there was always someone awake. It was the divider between the seating area and a service area that included the the toilet. She got it into her bag before dawn and must have been very sleepy the next day.
Hospitals as it turned out where not a good place for plunder as it turned out, not because it wasn't easy to swipe stuff, but because she turned her nose up at anything that wasn't branded. Their linen was almost entirely generic but she still managed to obtain examples with markings from both the Montreal General Hospital and the Royal Victoria Hospital.
She was never caught, or possibly anyone who did catch her flinched at the idea of confronting anyone so brazen. She had a moral code, of sorts. She wouldn't have dreamed of stealing library books and would have looked with horror and revulsion at anyone who did. Shoplifting only happened much later in life when her finances and mental health were in tatters. But at that time her target was anything with company branding on it, placed prominently enough to discourage theft - the branding made it a sort of challenge to her. They bet she wouldn't steal anything marked so obviously that it was obviously stolen if you saw it off the premises, and she accepted the bet.
posted by Jane the Brown at 9:26 AM on December 19, 2021 [14 favorites]
We had so much BOAC plastic cutlery, which somehow my mum managed to finagle from the Glasgow Airport depot. It was all used, but mum washed it and it was used at the church for several years until the last fork broke its tines. Dad, who flew BEA twice a week to Dublin, would never have nicked even a teaspoon
posted by scruss at 9:29 AM on December 19, 2021
posted by scruss at 9:29 AM on December 19, 2021
On a Continental Airlines flight I noticed the cutlery was stamped ÇA, twice for some reason. Yes, the eating utensils were stamped “caca.”
posted by sjswitzer at 9:45 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by sjswitzer at 9:45 AM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
My grandparents took me on a trip to Ireland when I was 11. They made me hide the Aer Lingus cutlery in my bag and I was horrified but didn't want to disobey them so I did it. Now it's a fond memory I have of them.
posted by emd3737 at 1:15 PM on December 19, 2021
posted by emd3737 at 1:15 PM on December 19, 2021
In legitimate air travel souvenir news, my card-playing grandparents used to have quite the collection of airline branded playing cards, from Pan Am to People Express.
It was a nice thing when shut in on a snowy day, to pass some time playing with a deck from Hawaiian Airlines or Royal Caribbean and be reminded that at least it was warm somewhere.
Especially the odd items in the bunch - the Qantas cards were circular, and Lufthansa was a shallow cardboard tray with two pairs of painted wooden dice and a little booklet of game rules, marked Würfelspiel.
Nobody plays cards on the plane anymore, but I think Amtrak and VIA will still sell you a deck at the snack bar for the price of a beer.
(I feel like Amtrak used to have some Collect 'em All sets, for different routes? An Art Deco back design for the 20th Century Limited, desert photos for the decks sold on the Southwest Chief, etc?) Anyway, that's how I learned about clever logo design, when Mom pointed out how the Northwest Airlines card backs had an A inside the N hidden in the W, with the leftover triangle pointing northwest.
posted by bartleby at 2:00 PM on December 19, 2021
It was a nice thing when shut in on a snowy day, to pass some time playing with a deck from Hawaiian Airlines or Royal Caribbean and be reminded that at least it was warm somewhere.
Especially the odd items in the bunch - the Qantas cards were circular, and Lufthansa was a shallow cardboard tray with two pairs of painted wooden dice and a little booklet of game rules, marked Würfelspiel.
Nobody plays cards on the plane anymore, but I think Amtrak and VIA will still sell you a deck at the snack bar for the price of a beer.
(I feel like Amtrak used to have some Collect 'em All sets, for different routes? An Art Deco back design for the 20th Century Limited, desert photos for the decks sold on the Southwest Chief, etc?) Anyway, that's how I learned about clever logo design, when Mom pointed out how the Northwest Airlines card backs had an A inside the N hidden in the W, with the leftover triangle pointing northwest.
posted by bartleby at 2:00 PM on December 19, 2021
We may or may not have some Deutsche Bahn coffee mugs in our cupboard. If this somehow happens to be the case, let it be known that I officially haven't the foggiest how they got there.
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:34 PM on December 19, 2021
posted by Too-Ticky at 2:34 PM on December 19, 2021
Many years ago on an overnight flight from New York to London, British Airways gave us each a little bag with a sleep mask, slipper socks, and a toothbrush. I kept it for years without ever using any of the items.
My Holiday Inn towel with the old green cursive logo came from the costume closet of a theater company that was shutting down and giving stuff away, so I can't claim the thievery points on that one. But it's sturdy as fuck; I've had it in regular use for more than ten years and it looks practically new.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:37 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
My Holiday Inn towel with the old green cursive logo came from the costume closet of a theater company that was shutting down and giving stuff away, so I can't claim the thievery points on that one. But it's sturdy as fuck; I've had it in regular use for more than ten years and it looks practically new.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:37 PM on December 19, 2021 [1 favorite]
Fun post and thread. My spouses grandmother was notorious for taking little things from businesses, especially airlines. I don't remember any branded cutlery, which is kind of weird. (Maybe there's still a box of it somewhere.) When she died we had to figure out what to do with hundreds of forty year old sugar packets. We kept some of the cooler looking ones, especially Eastern Bloc stuff from the 70s. I'm pretty sure the family just threw out the drawers full of soap, paper napkins, salt and pepper packets, bank pens, hotel writing pads, etc.
She also sometimes took more substantial things, including neighbors' cats. She was always caught, as far as I know, and returned them pleading confusion.
It's true she had a hard early life that might explain the tendency (including some time as a child in Auschwitz I), but I suspect she mostly took stuff 'cause she was incredibly bored and secretly hated being an aging housewife in the suburbs.
posted by eotvos at 11:52 AM on December 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
She also sometimes took more substantial things, including neighbors' cats. She was always caught, as far as I know, and returned them pleading confusion.
It's true she had a hard early life that might explain the tendency (including some time as a child in Auschwitz I), but I suspect she mostly took stuff 'cause she was incredibly bored and secretly hated being an aging housewife in the suburbs.
posted by eotvos at 11:52 AM on December 20, 2021 [1 favorite]
JUST the other day, I forced myself to finally throw out the cute little Mickey Mouse hotel soaps I'd been holding onto since my last stay at a Disney resort in 2012. I couldn't use or display them because I'm allergic to scented soap, and nobody else wanted them, so they were sitting in two layers of Ziploc bags in the bottom of a box of souvenirs.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:32 PM on December 20, 2021
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:32 PM on December 20, 2021
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