As a commuter, I'm always overly friendly to gate agents. I can only imagine how miserable I would be if I had to do that job...where if YOU do a good job, everything is just as expected, but if ANYTHING goes wrong, you're the face the pax are going to throw under the bus. I've had a few agents give me a hard time, one DAL gate agent wouldn't let me down to the plane to ask the captain if I could jumpseat and I had to catch a later flight, but the vast majority of the time every gate agent I deal with is awesome.