MMMmm. Interesting this, thanks for the warning. I try not to roll my eyes when I get to the same check-in at 04.00 tomorrow morning...but hopefully Ms Happy will not be on duty. I have warned little Realfish not to do the same.
Actually, I have felt for some time that our fleeting encounter with outstanding customer service has in this country given way to a culture of control, bossiness and self importance. I think our governement has led the way and set a bad example seemingly empowering every kind of petty beaurocrat and jobsworth eager to impose themselves and control everything that we do. With travel and transport (I've seen it on the railways also) I think that for a few who let the side down there's a sort of Munchausen's tendency - excessive control in the name of security (yes it is vitally important) being a vehicle that massages the ego.
I do remember something similar to Warkman's experience a couple of years back. Not loco but a BA flight to MRU. We were called to the gate but staff weren't quite ready and pax began to queue at what would have been the the fast channel for the customers who turn left. Quite a queue built up and they were eventually and belatedly shoooed away....to the very end of a very long queue. One Mauritian guy in his early 60's playfully admonished the BA staff member teling him that the was no sign to indicate they were at the wrong desk - BA man immediately snatched his boarding pass off him and told him that he wasn't flying -then did the same to his wife and then to someone else who had the temerity to complain about his behaviour.
I know pax can get on people's tits and I really have seen some bad passenger behaviour, but this man was a bully (come to think about it he had a look of Billy Bunter about him). That incident left a very nasty taste in the mouth so much so that to this day I remember that pratt's name - and I was a bystander. I remain convinced that there was an inverse relationship between the size of his ego and the size of his penis.
It seems to me that too many people, like Ms Happy, have forgotten that it's not what you do but the way that you do it that counts.