Many years ago I was an airline ticket agent at National Airport in Washington, DC. DCA. We were very expressly forbidden to accept gifts or tips from passengers.
We had any number of regular passengers, most of whom were wonderful. I had one who flew with us regularly, because he commuted into DC from somewhere else. Once I figured that out, I could check on his reservations of Friday afternoons, and if we were running late could call his office -- it took like three minutes and was easy enough to do in between dealing with all the other passengers -- and let him know about the delay. His office was invariably astonished and grateful.
We had another regular passenger we called "Ready Ticket Richards". Richards was his last name. Ready Ticket was a convenient way of ticketing regular passengers -- the details aren't important all these years later. Ready Ticket Richards lived in Albany, NY, and commuted to DC every week. He was incredibly loyal to my airline, Mohawk. I recall at least one evening when our flight was running late, and offered to rebook him on Allegheny. Nope. He stuck with us.
In 1972 Mohawk was subsumed into Allegheny. Ready Ticket Richards transferred every bit of his loyalty to Mohawk over to Allegheny, and now called us "The Pan Am of Pennsylvania." He was loud, seemingly obnoxious, and wonderful. One time all of the flights were delayed because of weather in DC. Ready Ticket Richards was hanging out at the counter, and when some passenger started complaining about the delay, he set that guy straight. Then he disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a very large candy box from the airport gift shop. We accepted it gratefully.
So trust me, people who deal with the public have a very difficult job and are truly grateful for small gifts.
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