Sorry to hear about your missing bag OP.

Agree with you that in their staff could have done better by noticing that there were people standing by a carousel and gone over to inquire whether you were ok/waiting especially knowing there were some bags not delivered. There was however baggage chaos 2 days ago in DXB with their computer falling over, so perhaps it is a rare occurrence for station staff (were they EK or a local handler?) to have to deal with!

Perhaps the expectation that great proactive customer service can be had from outstation baggage staff is a little unrealistic though (people who are proactive in terms of hospitality and have the energy to deal with novel situations like this are generally not found working baggage handling in airports, in my experience) and the waiting 45 minutes until you realised you should go to the baggage desk and no one was going to come and talk to you (as what happened with EY) compounded your irritation by having wasted time doing nothing.

Although I think the EK experience you had here is the norm with many other carriers (e.g. BA), as you mentioned with EY, problems like this can be an opportunity to create a positive impression which ironically can be better than when everything goes smoothly. That said, I'd rather have a situation where bags arrive and everything goes as I've paid for, and in many sectors with checked luggage with EK there hasn't been a problem. Even the priority tags work