This amused me greatly.

I was flying out a small station earlier this week, a place where DL flies to two destinations a couple times a days.

Anyway, I arrive early, and want to transfer to an earlier flight.

I approach the desk, an am greeted by a very young man. I ask if I can standby on the earlier flight.

(I should say that I am English.)

The young man looks terrified for a moment, and then shouts to the back :-

"Garth, there's some foreign guy here, I don't know what he wants."

(I've changed the names, to protect the silly )

'Garth' comes out, ask what I want, and I repeat my request. The following exchange occurs :-

"Delta don't allow stand-by on earlier flights, it's illegal."

Me - "Yes, you do, I've done it here many times before."

"Oh, we only allow it for frequent fliers."

"I am a frequent flyer."

"I mean people who fly a lot, and have status."

"I do have status."

"I mean who are gold."

"I am a platinum."

"I said gold."

"Gold is above platinum, isn't it?"

"I don't think it is, but anyway, we don't do stand-bys."

"You just said you do."

Garth then turns to the back - "Martha, some foreigner guy is out here causing trouble!"

"Martha" appears, asks what I want, and, hey presto, 30 seconds later I have a boarding pass for the earlier flight.

"Garth" and his young side-kick look astonished

It was almost as much fun as the time my younger Brother flew out of ISP, and (when describing what gate he needed at PHL) the helpful US employee drew him a picture of a gate

So it's not only me! What you describe there is hilarious! I seem to get into bizarre situations only with the immigration guys, like yesterday in YYZ. With DL, I only suffered something in those lines when an ATL red coat was shouting "another stupid European ...".

ROFLMAO

Really funny story. On behalf of Americans everywhere, I'd like to apologize for your encounter with some 'muricans.

Glad to hear it ended well, and hopefully those TAs learned a thing or two.

Awesome! It amazes me how so many of my fellow Americans are idiots.

This sounds like one of those stations where employees are TAs/GAs/Baggage handlers/janitors.

While not saying that many of you are (that's not true), I am amazed that many *do* think we foreigners are idiots or at least slightly retarded :-(

Which airport ?

And deaf. The standard response to a "Pardon me?" after some unintelligible gibberish is to repeat the same gibberish just LOUDER.
Always cracks me up. One day I will say: "Sorry Sir, I am not deaf, just a foreign retard..." with a US passport. LOL

I hope you're writing a complaint to DL. This is unacceptable on many levels.

In have no idea if you are joking or not.

You do realize that the employees in question are part of some airport support staff and not DL, right?

Is DL really supposed to play nanny with all this crowd? If so, the solution would be to just pull out of these minor outstations, they make little profit anyway.

OP, did they really draw your brother a picture of the gate? That is very funny.

I actually am not joking. If I were in charge at DL and I had front-facing employees who not only didn't understand company policy but also were demeaning toward passengers, I would DEFINITELY want to know about it.

Atleast you didn't have a Delta GA handing out hotel vouchers say "You're both of the same race you can share a room" both were complete strangers.

Well but you at least have an American passport. That makes things easier and you do not need to worry about not being admitted into the U.S. I just came back from YYZ and had several issues with one of the trained monkeys at the pre-screening. The agent got really angry at me, while I was just answering his questions as asked. But honestly, what should one answer when asked whether the European Union is an American compnay or not??!

His name was not Garth, his name is Bart and he is frim Springfield