At least at the SFO ticketing counter, I can pretty easily spot which United employees are on top of their game and which ones aren't based on how they interacted with the computer systems. I've had a few cases that should have been "simple" but I'm quite sure the employees were not handling it the most efficient way (which included many confused calls on their personal cell phone to the main United line). Anyway, after a few really long transactions and one botched ticket that I found out about the day of my flight, I'm certainly much more defensive now! Maybe I should look into the ticket-by-mail, but I'm stuck right now with some paper vouchers so I'm too afraid to have those go by mail and risk being lost somewhere