Lotpax, no, I donīt believe I couldn't have handled it better. Most of the time, you only need to politely remind pax of the regulations, and they comply immediately. I politely requested that this gentleman kept his luggage with him. He completely ignored me, and I followed him and asked him again, politely, to go back to his luggage, as, first, it could get stolen (an empty coffee shop table is not going to stop a thief), and second, that it was my duty to report unnatended luggage to security (which it is, and it gets drilled into our brains every day, especially back then, three weeks after a bunch of unnatended bags blew up three commuter trains in Madrid). The gentleman smiled and kept saying it was only for a minute, and off he went. I donīt mind that the shop is just across the hall. As I said, it could have been someone official trying to check my response.
I am extremely professional dealing with passengers, but everything has a limit. We once had a passenger disrupting the entire boarding because his seat had been changed. We told him that there had been an aircraft change and the config was different, so that seat didnīt exist, basically. It didn't matter to the passenger, even when we told him he would be compensated. He started to be extremely rude, and when all passengers were on board and the aircraft ready to go, he was still shouting abuse and demanding his original seat. What whould we have done? Call in the engineers and build a nice extra seat for him? After repeatedly been told that that wasn't possible and asking him to please get in the aircraft, as he was delaying the flight, he answered that he wouldn't go on board unless he had that seat, and that he was not getting inside because he had two bags checked in and he knew we would wait in order to avoid a delay while getting his bags off. After a few minutes, the dispatcher tore his boarding pass in two, as the captain had have enough and instructed her to close the door and start offloading the bags, to which the passenger reacted by accepting his new seat and the compensation, quite rudely. The captain didn't accept him for the flight and left him behind, as he had already caused a delay, took the bags off and the aircraft departed 20 minutes later.
Now, what is the correct way of dealing with abusive passengers with totally unreasonable demands, even if itīs not their fault? What should this captain have done, considering the passenger would only accept a solution that was totally impossible, didn't listen to explanations, prevented the gate team leader from organising the boarding and thus slowing it considerably, and was outright abusive? Keep talking to him for 20 more minutes? Cancel the flight and request an aircraft change?
Some times you cannot be as proffessional as you would like, and all of this was done with courtesy and understanding. The passenger was looking for an upgrade, that was obvious as well, but sorry, the aircraft is full and we are not going to downgrade someone who has paid for a ticket in business just because you cannot have an aisle in the bulkhead, especially when you didn't even pay for it.