Funny story (in retrospect)...

A couple of years ago, our in-house travel department was training a new agent and letting her practice by booking and cancelling dummy reservations in Sabre. At one point, they apparently pulled my profile as I had (as I heard it later) an "interesting profile" with very specific seat, meal, and upgrade requests. They apparently picked a flight that some of our team were traveling on and practiced "adding" an additional traveler to an existing reservation.

Well, at that time I had a standing upgrade request in my profile for AA... and it also happens that they did not cancel my reservation although it was never ticketed.

So fast forward to the day of departure when the president of our parent company and one of my colleagues are traveling DFW-PHX. Colleague was Platinum, president merely Gold. Since my ticket hadn't been issued (but I had been assigned a first seat), they were paging me in the gate area. As colleague tells the story, this is what transpired:

President approaches counter and wants to know why I am being paged (remember, I'm not "actually" on the flight and they are trying to figure out why I'm going to Phoenix). Agent tells him that I have a reservation and they are trying to locate me to issue the ticket. He proceeds to say "I'm the president of her company - where is she sitting?" They reply "she has a seat in first class" to which he replies "remove her from that - we are on the upgrade wait list and have more seniority".

Agent laughs and tells him that isn't possible (and Platinum colleague is next on the list after me for an upgrade). President tells colleague "if she gets on this plane in first, she is fired". Of course, I'm at home asleep (its 5:45 am) and so I don't check in for the flight. Colleague pulls his own name off the upgrade list. And President doesn't clear. Apparently they checked first twice just to make sure I didn't board after they did - and he repeated to colleague several times that he would fire me if he saw me in first.

Irrational (we had no policy against upgrading with ones own upgrades) and I'm glad I don't work for those folks anymore. (These folks were the same ones that I found out took upgrade certificates that an airline sales rep had dropped by with instructions to give them to myself and another frequent flying colleague.) I realize it was their company (although now its mine) and yet I don't think bullying employees is good for morale!