I think I have gotten recognized or thanked more often than not. Got a very nice handwritten note on a postcard from the purser working EWR-VCE a month ago. That said, I would really appreciate the benefits of being 1K actually being given. On LHR-EWR, the agents working the gate insisted that 1K members had to line up with group 1, so we ended up at the back of a long line and even (somehow) boarded later than the first parts of Group 2. Not sure how multiple GAs somehow got that ingrained in their minds.