"Friendlier service doesn’t cost a thing."

That’s what one travel writer said, after complaining about an experience on board a flight recently. But as a flight attendant with years of experience, my first thought was: Yes. It does.

Whenever I speak to people about what I do for a living, most seem to assume the money is pretty good. I did, too, before I became a flight attendant.

Despite the reputation of the job, there’s nothing glamorous about life as a flight attendant, especially in the first few years. New flight attendants who work for major carriers start out making $18,000-$20,000 a year. Flight attendants at smaller airlines and regional carriers? They make even less.

The airlines won’t tell you that, though. Ask, and they’ll refer to some stat about the median annual wage: $40,000. Sounds so much nicer, doesn’t it? Something else they won’t tell you is how long it takes to make that kind of money working a regular schedule, or the kind of flying it takes to get there when you have less than 10 years with a carrier.

“I took this job to spend what little money I make on vacations I can't afford,” joked a new hire, who works 120 hours a month, after she saw me tweeting about flight attendant pay.

"But flight attendants barely work," is what I hear all the time. Don’t let the hours fool you.

A hundred and twenty hours a month may sound reasonable for your typical job on the ground, but in the air, it's insane. Working "80 hours" a month — a more regular schedule for flight attendants — actually means working many, many hours more.

We’re only paid for time in the air. That flight attendant greeting you at the boarding door, helping you find a place for your bag, guitar, crutches, wedding gown, emotional support pig? They're not being paid.

The clock doesn’t officially start ticking until the door is closed and the plane backs away from the gate. That's why flight attendants hate delays maybe even more than passengers. At my airline, when a flight is cancelled, I lose the hours, meaning I don’t get paid. I have to look for another trip — pray I can find another trip — to make up for it.

Watch they'll wait to cancel our flight to Dallas when we get to the airport... so we can sit around with angry passengers and not get paid. — Heather Poole (@Heather_Poole) February 23, 2015

Time on the ground adds up, which is why the most senior flight attendants work the best trips, longhaul flights, to maximize their time in the air. It's also why the number of hours can be misleading. Not all 12 hour trips are created equal.

I have 19 years with my airline, and I’m based at one of the most junior bases in the system: New York. It’s where most of our new hires end up, even though it's too expensive to live here on our salary. That's why so many flight attendants — including me — commute to the city (even though I live in Los Angeles). If I were based in LA, where my airline's most senior flight attendants work, I’d spend more time on the ground than in the air.

My two-day, 11 hour roundtrip from New York to Los Angeles might only take me 13 hours to complete, whereas a new hire might have to work three days (and who knows how many hours) hopping from city to city to make the same amount of time. While I’m on duty seven hours, a junior flight attendant could be on duty 12 or 14 hours. We'll be paid the same. Factor in the layovers and the time away from home, and it looks more like minimum wage than $25 an hour.

JFK-LAS: On duty: 10 hours 52 minutes. Paid: 6 hours 17 minutes. Layover: 8 hours 32 minutes — Heather Poole (@Heather_Poole) February 23, 2015

"How do you do it?" I’ve been asked by more than one flight attendant hopeful.

Enter the "crashpad," where flight attendants literally crash between trips.

In my first crashpad, there were probably 30 or 40 of us living together in a five-bedroom house. That's a guess — I have no idea how many roommates I had because people were constantly in and out at all hours of the day and night.

Six of us lived in my room alone, with bunk beds lining the walls. I spent $100 a month to stay there. I couldn’t afford anything else.

“I made $10,000 my first year and lived in San Fran,” Kim Keegan, a flight attendant with a major carrier, told me. "I lived in my car for months."

That's not even the worst of it. There are flight attendants who live in the operations center at the airport.

Something tells me that’s not the image the airlines want to portray when you see us walking through the terminal. But the reality is many of us are glamorous homeless people.

“The first year I made $40,000 was in 2001. I’d been flying 10 years," said Penni Reynolds, a flight attendant with a major carrier. "It took me until 2011 to make over $40,000 again, because of all the cutbacks [after 9/11].”

Like her, it took most of my colleagues 10 years working a regular schedule to make that kind of money. Seniority matters so much it makes attendants hesitant to switch airlines. Nobody wants to start all over again, from the bottom, working crappy trips.

"But my brother's cousin's aunt's friend makes $80,000!"

This is where somebody will call me out, and tell me about a friend of a friend who is rolling it in. Well, that aunt, or friend of a friend, or second cousin twice removed (if they exist), has probably been flying for 40 years or is senior enough to hold the good trips. Good for them! The rest of us aren’t so lucky. I’m not saying it's unheard of, but the people who are making that much have been flying for decades, or are barely ever home and rarely see the light of day. What kind of life is that?

“I've never made $40,000," said Beth Henry, a flight attendant with over 15 years experience with a major carrier. "By the time I made enough hourly to get that much, I had kids and [my] husband's schedule to work around."

Chicago - New York — Heather Poole (@Heather_Poole) February 21, 2015

Same for me. I choose to work less time so I can be home to watch my son grow up, and I’m lucky I have that choice — not all my colleagues do.

Future flight attendants probably won't be so lucky, not the way things are changing (and have changed).

"Quit if you don’t like it!" may be what you're thinking right about now. I hear it whenever I write about the challenges of being a flight attendant.

Don't get me wrong: I’m not complaining, I’m explaining how it works. I want future flight attendants to know what they’re getting into before they give it all up to live “the dream.” I can’t tell you how many emails I get from mothers with young children who think I make a lot of money and barely work.

I don't do this job for the money. I do it because I love it.

And anyway, quit and what? Let somebody else sleep in their car? That doesn’t make things better.

When I first started flying, things were great. I was broke — oh was I broke — but there was pool time in Miami, rollerblading in Rio, window shopping in Rome ... croissants in Paris. And if you’re lucky enough to hold the good trips, it’s still a good job.

But for most flight attendants, all we see at the end of a long day is a Holiday Inn at an industrial park a mile away from the airport. We’re lucky if there’s enough time to eat, sleep and shower.

And you wonder why I'm not smiling. I'm not mean, just tired. And probably hungry. — Heather Poole (@Heather_Poole) February 23, 2015

I feel sorry for new flight attendants today. Most of them will never make what I’m making, and they’re working under a different pay scale, with new work rules. Their days are longer and their layovers are practically nonexistent.

Now add in flights that are fuller than ever, travelers acting crazy, and whatever contagious disease is going around, and — oh yeah — terrorism, and you have to wonder: Is it still worth it? I don’t know.

Airlines are advertising new planes, flat beds, more amenities — particularly for first and business class — to try and convince the public that they are committed to making the flying experience better. But if they really want to do that, they should consider better compensating the people who are interacting most with passengers.

In the mean time, I hope flight attendants can keep smiling.

Heather Poole is a flight attendant for a major U.S. carrier, and the author of the New York Times bestseller "Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet." You can follow her on Twitter at @Heather_Poole.