Originally Posted by fastair

To be honest, no I don't. I see what you are saying, but I have NOT been trained on the ins and outs of what benefits a person can nominate someone else to get and when it would become effective. My "judgement" isn't to do what an individual tries to persuade me to do when it lowers someone else's chance of getting on the flight by bypassing them completely, it is to follow the logic built into the system. She is not gold now, and as such, for me to bypass other golds would be even more unfair to them, especially when their name is on the list on a wide screen tv over my head above hers. Last flight of the night. Do you think that I would have gotten out of there alive if in full view of these other people (and they had to be aware of the situation as he would not leave the center of attention) I caved into his logic instead of the published logic and it stranded them for a day?

Could you imagine the calls of "Shenanigans!" if they (in the same boat, misconnected gold flyers) saw a man keep pushing and pushing in front of us for 30 min, then suddenly get have him and a lower person on the list disappear from the list, then board, while the other golds were sitting still hopeing to get on?


As for sense of humor, when I get frustrated, I tell the people it is OK for them to laugh at me. Then we are laughing together, as I am laughing at myself all day long.

While some attempts to train me from the customers are benign at worst or beneficial at best, this was clearly not the case here. I choose to get my training from the source (UA), as if it comes down to it, I am covered if trained improperly. If I get "ghetto" trained on the calle by the customers instead of my employer, I have no defence if what they teach is improper, or improperly applied "But manager, a customer told me this is what I am supposed to do..." isn't going to hold much weight. If I did what every customer told me to do, noone would ever pay for an upgrade, change fee, or even their tickets.

I am betting he might even be a FT member, and if he reads this, I am glad they both got on, the right way (even if he thinks the 3rd agent fell for the scheme, he didn't he had already cleared the people in between you two.) But a word of advise. At a busy gate, state your case, then leave the service area once replied to. Every misconnected customer has problems that should be addressed, and blocking them from the podium/hovering over them instead of giving them their privacy is in bad form. The squeeky wheel does not get the grease when that wheel prevents the rest of the cart from working. There are stanchions set up and a queue for a reason. Those getting worked on stand in front of the podium, those loitering/waiting to clear standby have plenty of space away from the service area to do it. And if you have nominated her and she is due your benefits soon, I hope that goes smoothly without furthur delay, but we at the airport know nothing of these MP interactions. We go by what the HDQ programers have programmed, at the direction of the MP people, and whatever status is currently in UA's system is what we use becuase it is 100% automated (I can't tell the computer that a silver is a gold, or my friend is a GS when he is really a NRSA, and I am glad that I can't. It is far simpler to work with the system than against it.)