I was flying (vacation as a paying customer) the other day. Had a family of four sitting three on one side and one across the aisle. Some confusion in seating as another person outside the family was in the wrong seat. FA came to help out the situation. She forced the seated family to shuffle their seats so that each family member was sitting in their by name seat. Mind you they were sitting in the correct seats as a family block, just not in the one by name. Utter ridiculous passed off as “you have to sit in the seat my manifest says, if you wanted to sit in a different order you should have done that when you purchased the seats.”

I don’t blame her as much as I blame Dallas. You have inconsistent or contradictory guidance coming out of Dallas leading to wildly different results on the line. It’s comes across as confusing and seems arbitrary and incompetent to the customer - because it is.