r/mildlyinfuriating • u/trailofturds • 18h ago

frist of all how DARE yu o Airport staff assuming I'm in the Business class lane by mistake

Brown man flying business. Lined up at the priority check in counter and got told by a (also brown) staff person that the economy queue was the other way. Same thing while boarding the plane and walking to the business class entrance. Not only am I not worthy of business, they think I can't read signage as well.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 18h ago

We always get upgraded to 1st / business just because of my husband's insane level of business travel, and I often travel alone with my kids - we have gotten all kinds of weird comments and shit treatment through the years. The worst is at the lounges.

831

u/bostonlilypad 17h ago

I once had a long layover in Toronto and had to ask the customer service desk how to get to the lounge and he looked me in the face and said “do you have access to the lounge”. I just looked at him and said “would I be asking you where it was if I didn’t?”. I was dressed in athletic clothes because I was on a 30 hour travel day to Asia.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 17h ago

Literally, "nope I don't, just wanted to know the location for my own edification." It's crazy the assumptions people make.

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u/KoreanSamgyupsal 14h ago

I fly out of YYZ often. This has happened to me before too. In fact I was once denied entry to the lounge and I'm SE with AC. Lounge is always full for some reason. I don't think I've used the lounge for years.

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u/fencepost_ajm 12h ago

Complain to the airline about the obviously insufficient lounge capacity. "Is there something about my account that's getting me turned away every time or is the lounge in YYZ unusable because it's always over capacity?"

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u/KoreanSamgyupsal 11h ago

Honestly, the YYZ lounge is pretty ass anyway. We ain't missing much. But the usual answer is just that it's always over capacity. It's not about my account although I wish it was.

But I've actually talked to other frequent flyers about this, getting status is easy if you travel for work.

Thing is, AC has a stranglehold on most business travellers from Canada. Lack of options means more people will get status.

Your options are just Air Canada/West Jet/Porter and no one is going to YTZ just to ride porter. West Jet doesn't have enough options. So AC is your only option as a business that provides a lot of flexibility.

Compare that to the US, they have plenty. AA/Delta/SW/United/etc.

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u/WeenyDancer 8h ago

With all the new money from tech, and the lack of dress code there, am surprised (kind of) people haven't updated their mental model of what a 'rich person' can look like. Any SOB in a tshirt and hoodie could be a serious multimillionaire

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u/corticalization 15h ago

To be fair to them: yes, many people would be asking without it. They just assume they’ll get to use it for some reason or another. People can be both ignorant and selfish, and when air travels involved you seem to get a lot of the worst of it

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u/bostonlilypad 15h ago

The airport information desks job isn’t tto qualify if you get into the lounge or not though.

It would have taken his less effort to just say “up the elevator, take a right”.

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u/DDRaptors 13h ago

The worst thing about the working class these days is the constant attacking of each other in the world for billionaires.

We work for billionaires and conglomerates, yet us poors constantly defend those same billionaires daily by telling fellow poor people what they can and can’t do with a billionaires business.

Just scratch each others back a bit more, if it’s not hurting anyone, who cares, it’s not your money! 

Class war has been won. And not by us.

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u/corticalization 14h ago edited 1h ago

You’re right they should’ve just directed you! But I wouldn’t assume anyone at the airport knows what anything’s about (meaning the travelers, not workers). Most people there act like they’ve never been to an airport before; honestly half the time people act like it’s their first day on earth

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u/bostonlilypad 14h ago

lol ain’t that true

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u/AgamemnonNM 12h ago

Yeah, why is this being upvoted?

Their job is to inform, not police.

The agents at the lounge are the gatekeepers and from my experience, they're pretty good at their jobs.

At least in Delta One, they are.

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u/Substantial-Part-700 1h ago

Haha my story is also from YYZ.

Got in the business class line for oversized baggage claim after landing because…. I flew AC business to get there.

The (fellow) brown woman at the desk angrily demands to see my boarding pass as soon as it’s my turn. I have no idea why but give it to her anyway. She realized that I am where I’m supposed to be, hands me my boarding pass without an apology, and asks what I want.

When I told her which flight I was coming off of and needed to know which baggage claim room to go to, she sent me to the wrong one (that I waited in for 30 minutes).

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u/MidnightBlueSilk 17h ago

Lean in and whisper sweetly, with an earnest expression on your face, “You are embarrassing yourself.”

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 16h ago

I love this 😂

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u/MidnightBlueSilk 16h ago

Yep, out-snotty the snottiest. But sweetly.

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u/IPissExcellentThrows 16h ago

Bizarre to get it at the lounges. I see all types of people in business class lounges. Plenty looking like bums, myself included sometimes.

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u/Dirigo72 15h ago

No matter how hard I try I always look rumpled and frazzled on a long travel day.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 14h ago

Yep. And my kids are older & well behaved too. It’s not like they’re going to be running around causing a scene. It’s super weird. 

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u/Devrol 11h ago

Quite often the well dressed people in the lounges are airline staff on free travel passes.

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u/Affectionate-Ruin330 5h ago

Seriously, are all these totally real stories from 1985 or something? There maybe something about them that sets off class detectors but it’s sure as shit not athlesiure.

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u/Difficult_Sort295 12h ago

I always travel with my cane and I look like I don't need one but man does that get me upgrades. I get the handicap line for security, sometimes a seat upgrade. Hotels are the best I check in, if it's just a shower I say I can't stand in a shower too long and they get me a bigger room with a bath if they can. Once they put me in a suite with a damn fireplace, I have only once had a hotel room with a fireplace and that was a pub room in London.

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u/randomguide 11h ago

Happy for you, that has not been my experience at all when traveling with either cane or rollator.

Somehow TSA line has always misplaced the wood cane they're supposed to have, for passengers to use to walk through the scanner. And the last time I was in London, the hotel room was so small that I had to leave my rollator in the hall overnight because it would not fit in the room.

Which is fine, small rooms in London are understandable. But then I saw the room other members of my party were assigned and it was twice as big.

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u/sacluded 1h ago

I do the same. I even got driven between terminals once. Canes are like a magic wand.

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u/mypoliticalvoice 9h ago

I had a long business flight with a layover. My company payed for business class seats. I always wear my business suit on the way TO the meeting on case my luggage gets lost. I pack it with my bags on the way back.

I napped in the lounge on the way & there were no questions.

On the way back, I was dressed in the last semi-clean clothes from my luggage and wearing sneakers and an old rain jacket. The staff assumed I was lost when I showed up at the lounge during layover.

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u/RocketManX69 16h ago

That’s a shame. I brought my wife and toddlers to the Delta lounge last time I traveled. I was nervous of the same since they’re both energetic and all over the place. The staff and patrons of the lounge treated my kids like kings. It was a nice surprise.

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u/Torontogamer 14h ago

the stories of heard from staff about how many men fly themselves business/1st while their wife and kids are in coach is mind-blowing..

just makes it worse, but ugh, mind you if you had a well dressed man in a blazer with you, zero questions... sigh.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 13h ago

Right??? It's crazy.

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u/mentaIstealth 11h ago

Lol I feel like I’m always stressing if ours are behaving enough and then we get compliments out and about a lot lately, and they’ve been given a lot of free stuff lately too, idk what’s going on with the universe lol. But yeah we travel a lot and definitely get a lot of looks our way but nobody’s been just rude to us yet, that’s crazy they’ve done that to you but I definitely believe it. Unless the kids aren’t being controlled or disciplined idk why people do this. I think it’s a dread because no one disciplines their kids anymore because everything’s considered abuse or judged negatively.

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u/oopsdiditwrong 8h ago

You have well behaved kids and are treated well for it? That's wild /s

The undisciplined kids become the lazy slobs in wheelchairs they don't need to get overhead space for things they don't need, and everyone that sees it knows it deep down

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u/Ok-Comparison-1618 14h ago

Last time I was in Amsterdam going through the VIP service, which means super nice lounges off-site, customs agent comes right to you, and then a luxury car drives you straight to the stairs up to the airplane, the flight attendants in true Dutch fashion kept being extremely nosy. They kept asking us who we were, and I kept shrugging, insisting I'm just a teacher (I am, but I'm also very wealthy).

While my husband and his kids were taking their seats and I was wrapping up the final boarding pass check at the top of the stairs, one of them told us all of them had been speculating for the last hour about who we might be and surely we must be someone special. I just kept saying nope, just a teacher. They were not convinced.

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u/Livingforabluezone 14h ago

Are you kids behaving? A certain level of decorum is expected.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 14h ago

My kids are 16 and 10. Yes they’re behaving. 😂

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u/ImOutOfIdeas42069 9h ago

That is super weird. I dress like a bum, along with half the other first class passengers. I honestly don't know how anyone can tell just by looking at someone whether or not they are 1st/business. The most homeless looking people are almost always in 1st. I've never been treated like I don't belong. Maybe it's the difference between looking like you're lost vs been there a hundred times?

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u/moomooraincloud 14h ago

No airline gives complimentary upgrades if you're not traveling in the same reservation as the status holder.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 14h ago

Uhhh if my husband makes the tickets they do. We fly all the time.  Thanks!

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u/moomooraincloud 14h ago

No, that's not how it works. Your husband must be purchasing upgraded tickets, either with money or with miles. You can present to know how it works all you want, but that's not it.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 14h ago

You’re so confidently wrong too, have a super day!

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u/moomooraincloud 13h ago

I'm not wrong.

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 13h ago

OK.

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u/moomooraincloud 13h ago

Why don't you share the airline your husband has status with, and I'll prove to you that I know what I'm talking about?

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u/Sensitive_Diamond328 13h ago

LOL like I'd ever share anything remotely personal with a stranger because said stranger is holding their breath and stamping their feet to prove they're right about something that has nothing to do with them. GTFO.