The two-leg commute out of RAP hasn't treated me too badly. In another month I'll be SLC-based, so that should cut down significantly on the time spent getting back and forth.

I've posted this before, on the thread about gate agents from hell, but the worst commuting experience I've had was FAT-DEN, three days after Christmas. The inbound was late, and was going to be full because the previous flight that day hadn't made it in either. I was the only standby listed though, to my surprise, and thought for certain I would be able to sit in the JS. I never even got the opportunity.

I checked in plenty early in uniform and let the agent know I could sit OMC. Once it looked like nobody else was getting on I approached the counter again and asked her if I could go talk to the captain about sitting up front. She says "Sir, sit down and I'll get to you in a minute,". So...I sit a couple seat away from gate for a few minutes, she's frantically working away on her computer. Two more people run up, throw her their boarding passes, and head down the bridge. Right behind them, the agent closes the door and radios down to ops that the flight's closed and reads the numbers to them. I jumped up and asked again if I could talk to the crew. This time she says "No, I'm sorry, the flight's closed, I can't let you down there." I never lost my cool, even though I was fuming inside. I finally just walked away when she said "Look, this was a quick turn and we didn't want the delay code going on the gate (even though the flight was like an hour and a half late coming in???), besides, they were weight restricted and they wouldn't have let you on anyways." I've never been so angry. Normally I would have just shrugged, since you expect this kind of stuff to happen, but that was one more day since Christmas that I wasn't going to see my kids. This lady is a customer service MANAGER too, for crying out loud.

That one still grinds my gears.