And mostly because of this:
The US legacy carriers in particular are saddled with many long-serving flight attendants. These (mostly) women were sold on the idea that this job was a career, and a "glamorous" one at that, with long layovers in exotic places, traveling with intelligent, wealthy people. But this idea flies in the face of what the job actually is. A job that requires no education, not even any computer skills, and has little pathway for advancement. And a job that is protected by still powerful unions. I've spoken to hundreds of flight attendants over the years, and have a good understanding of their thinking. A great many are angry - angry at themselves for thinking this was going to be a career, angry at the airline for going bankrupt and stripping them of wages and benefits. This anger manifests itself exactly as you've described - telling white lies to avoid any further work, reporting passengers as "disruptive" to the pilot, and even more egregious behavior. Many flight attendants refer to vacation-destination flights as "the flying Clampetts". If they hate their job and their passengers, they should go. But they can't, or don't.

It *used* to be a fairly glamorous career. There *used* to be FAA approved college courses (IIRC, it was a 12-14 month program) for flight attendants. It *used* to include pensions and a decent wage. It *used* to include having enough staff on a flight to properly care for the passengers and, initially at least, nurses were often hired for these positions. But "let the market! decide", let's deregulate everything, etc. and this is what we end up with. People who think they should be allowed to fly from ORD to MCO for $59.00 one-way (nevermind that doesn't come close to covering the cost of the flight), deep cycles in China and the Phillipines, 1/100th the FAA oversight of those deep cycles, etc. Commercial air travel is a festering shit house now and I don't see it getting any better. What do people really expect in an age where Jet fuel costs more than $6/gallon and even a CRJ100 burns around 1500pph (184 gallons per hour x $6.00 ~ $1,000/hour for fuel *alone* and a CRJ100 only hauls 50 people when fully loaded). So, how does any airline make money? They treat their employees like crap (oh, and btw, the starting salary for a regional airline pilot is around 14K/year and that *does* take around 30K in training to qualify for). And they do that because since airline fees are *not* regulated, some ass clown will fly dangerous old aircraft with suspect pilots and undercut you on price.

Everybody except the shareholders has a right to be pissed off. If you're not getting paid anything, and you have no hope of a decent retirement, your benefits are cut every single year, your union has been defanged and you have to put up with every Tom, Dick and Harriet that feels "entitled" to fly on the cheap, getting pissy is not being petty.

This person's solution? It's all too typical. Hire foreign born slaves. They'll be happy with breadcrumbs.