Sanitation expert and a maintenance engineer

Garbage man, a janitor and you my dear

A real union flight attendant, my oh my

You ain't nothin' but a waitress in the sky

The lyrics to the Replacements' "Waitress in the Sky," a singalong favorite from their 1985 album Tim, are hardly complimentary. What listeners might not realize, though, is that the song isn't a rant about poor service — traveling by plane wasn't a luxury the 'Mats were usually able to afford, and they certainly wouldn't have expected to be served champagne if they did fly. (They might have tried to steal it from first class.)

In Bob Mehr's Trouble Boys, he explains that the song was actually inspired by stories songwriter Paul Westerberg heard from his sister Julie, a flight attendant. "I was playing the character of the creep who demands to be treated like a king," Westerberg told Mehr. "I'd heard all the stories from my sister about how [passengers] would yell at the flight attendants and then how they'd 'accidentally' spill something on them."

Now, as we've learned from one of Julie's coworkers, she's retired after a four-decade career serving airborne passengers on Delta — formerly Northwest Airlines, a carrier based in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Flight attendant Aimee Sosa's spouse sent this photo to The Current and requested "Waitress in the Sky," a request we were of course happy to oblige. Congratulations, Julie!