iMessage has been with the B team players lately. Asking to swap upgrade instruments from MUA to GUC to switch to airport standby list... Used to be a one text, one reply. Now met with just dense material:

Well, if I show up at the airport 2 hours before the flight, I definitely won't be on that airport standby list for a GUC instead of trying to clear days earlier with a Mileage Upgrade. I find myself training the text message agents ad infinitum.

I will say this - previously, the 'man' greeting to the DL DM line was the way to get seated with a good desk agent... and now I find the opposite, the super trained folks are the ones answering the 'woman' greeting line and I prefer it and hang up to seek it out. We know more about their business than they do - that's the biggest problem right now.

I was on a short haul flight recently in paid F and the Left Seat announced prior to departure that given the short duration of the flight, and expected turbulence, no cabins would be receiving any service as he'd asked the FAs to stay seated for the flight. No problem, but when the announcement was made, the door was still open and I asked the dedicated FC attendant if perhaps given that announcement he would be willing to scrounge us up a pre departure beverage, given we'd have none in the air - and he literally sang a sing song of "We don't have to dooooo that anyyymoooooreeeeee!"

And I was absolutely embarrassed, because my companion had never flown DL before, let alone FC, and all I had done was sing their praises on the way from the car to the SkyClub to the flight. To have that "song" sung back to me was pretty demoralizing. On the way out the door as we were first off he said "I'm training new FAs in the back and can't have them catching bad habits." -- Which -- is true -- to an extent, that he would be doing something not "by the book" - but I always found DL FAs to make the best of bad situations in the name of customer service before and now I'm pretty sure my companion is locked into AA/AS forever now.