Platinum poisoning. It'd be funny if it was just a silver card.

Nothing really wrong with this, and definitely not hillarious like the OPs story.
There's nothing wrong with trying to get a better level of service, particularly if for any reason you didn't travel so much in the last year but do plan to take your loyalty back to an airline with upcoming travel.
She sounds like she was polite enough in her approach. I don't get why you were eavesdropping...

Sometimes you cannot help but overhear - the complainer in question is generally quite loud about it, in my experience at many outstation lounge desks.

It happens all the time though - standard procedure for people to ask for exemptions: all sorts of excuses are deployed.

Parts of the business operation giving out exceptions usually engenders a feeling of entitlement in the recipient, viz. the number of people who get angry when denied according to procedure saying "but the lounge at xxxx let me in" or "xxxxx said I could" - or at least, those who do feel entitled cause a disproportionate amount of resources in dealing with them!

I think people on our flight on Monday wondered who we were! So I guess do you know who he is?!

Purser runs up and loudly says "welcome back mr M3red, I'm very sorry to say but we do not have your favourite wine the amuse Bouche (red wine) on this flight but we have x and y let me know what you wanted decanting and we'll get right to it, would you like some Dom Perignon in the mean time"

No one could not but hear the whole thing unfold. I was standing no more than 2 meters away from the receptionist desk.

The DYKWIA attitude became obvious when the queue stetched outside the hallway but she kept going at the receptionist, with all these weird excuses of which I recounted what got stuck.

She clearly knew the rules. Instead of stopping this scene at the second no, she was more than trying her luck without any regard to other passengers.

The only missing was for them to start running your shower to your desired temperature

I was not there, so I take your word for it that she was unnecessarily loud and causing the queue to tailback.

Still, it is the lounge attendants job to manage the queue. If the queue was tailing back, she should have asked the lady in question to wait aside, and perhaps mention that she is checking on her request with a senior (even if she isn't really checking, this would neutralise the situation and allow the attendant to continue with her role of admitting guests). Unless the lady in question was rude, it isn't really her job to manage the attendants queue for her.

Its all well and good that she wasn't following the rules, but what exactly are the rules with Etihad, lets put that into perspective. Bait and switch and only recently have they learnt to inform customers.

Case in point, EY Guest Silver members used to be able to use Business class lounges, then they took that privilege away; all well and good but don't give it in the first place then.

EY Guest Gold members used to be able to use the normal EY business class lounge in AUH, then they said they can only use the Al Reem lounge (which admittedly is not bad) and then they come back two days ago and say EY Guest Gold members can use the normal EY business class lounge in AUH again.

EY used to give spa treatments to all J & F passengers, 15mins for J, 30 for F, then they said only 15mins for F. You could always do a shave in addition to the spa treatment whether J or F, then they said no shaves to be comped in J whatsoever, then they said F passengers can now only have a shave or spa comped; not both. Then to ice it off they closed the spa in LHR, and I'm sure more to come.

Chauffer for all, then no chauffeur for saver, then no chauffeur at all except in UAE. EVEN IN F!

Oh and, flying AZ out from LHR one could use the EY LHR lounge as a gold member, then AZ started not doing so well financially. EY said no access to EY Guests own members at all when flying AZ (still an Etihad Airline Partner). There was ZERO public announcement of this change also.

If Etihad can chop and change like this without even informing the customer, what is the customer to think.

Once at check in I asked the attendant if there was any chance of an Op-Up from J-F (AUH-LHR), without so much as a blink he said sure and handed me a new boarding pass in F. No argument, no having to plead, he just did it, so at least their attitude works both ways.

To be fair, your story might be funny on a European/US carrier, where the FF benefits are consistent, but based on how inconsistent EY is, in good and bad ways, you can expect customers to behave like this too.

All well and good, but this is the Emirates forum and we're talking about Emirates flights, not Etihad.

Edy4eva was mentioning an experience he had on Etihad at AUH as a comparison to the OP's experience on Emirates.

Indeed... How have we got onto EY?

We can drop EY now if you wish... I think up to this point it was relevant. Let's compare to EK, EK is quite consistent with its policies and training, so I'd say Edy4Eva's situation would be a bit funnier on EK, but on EY, as I said I was not there, but I'd probably be sympathetic to the lady he is mentioning, and as for the OP's story, that was just too funny and not quite on the same level as this story.

I once had a high card holder (I think it was probably platinum) in front of me and he had that section of the Economy row to himself. Later on, when I made a comment to the person next to me about how decent the catering happened to be (always expect the worst in Economy), he chimed in from the row in front and we got talking. Turned out to be the nicest of chaps.and I got a few frequent flyer tips from him!