As a pilot you can quite often get a bollocking for arriving early.
Its call hub managemnet and because they have payed the minimum for ground handling you turn up early and all hell will let loose and you won't have a stand or meet and greet and it quite quickly turns to poo.
One of my mates has had a rather terse phone call about turning up 15mins early after having 60knts up his bum. He was going as slow as he could, apparently him turning up early and going on the wrong stand caused another 6 aircraft to be delayed.
So you can't win. You can get a "nice one" from one ground type and walk 20ft down a corridor and get moaned at by another one.
Its is very rare unless your in a small company and the boss is also a pilot that you will ever speak to the CEO. Accountant types don't particularly like speaking to a load of confident alpha types. Very occassionally you can see one cornered and they seem to go into a mode of answering questions that were never asked and completely ignoring any statements about things that arn't working.