Your wife should have known to not provoke the GA needlessly. She had already handed over the boarding pass and there was no need to school the GA on how to properly read an itinerary and after that particular line didn't go over very well, escalating the confrontation by further explaining to the GA how she could prevent scewing things up for other people down the line, oi vey! Not to excuse the reaction of the GA but something sounds a bit off on this story.