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I don't have premier status with any airline. I used to a decade or so ago, but then decided I preferred driving to flying whenever I could.
Even when I fly I'm kind of an eclectic flyer, using various airlines preferring to prioritize flight times, prices and convenience to building miles on one particular airline.
It's just what I prefer.
The day after Labor Day I was at O'Hare Airport in Chicago. The place was crawling. The security line was as long as I had seen it.
In the United terminal I remembered that there used to be a secondary security entrance at the east end. They had done a lot of remodeling since I had last used it, but I figured it was worth a shot.
I slalomed through the mass of fliers, avoiding bags, bodies and airport employees. And, low and behold, there it was. Another security line and it was really short compared to what I had just left.
"Cool!" I thought.
And then I saw the sign: "Premier Fliers Only." Ah...my find was too good to be true.
It appeared to me, though, that not all the peeps in line were premier fliers. So I asked an employee.
She said that generally that line is for premiers only, but because of the crush of customers they had opened it up to everyone.
I thought how nice this was. Management had seen the plight of the little man and responded. Empathy had led to sympathy and compassion.
So happily I remained right where I was.
About seven or eight people in front of me stood a middle-aged man in good shape, a suit and really shiny shoes. He was having an intense discussion with someone who seemed to be a TSA supervisor.
"I'm a million mile flier," said he. "But here I am in the premier line with just anybody!"
He wasn't loud. He wasn't rude. He wasn't even as snooty as that sounds. But he was emphatic and insistent.
The supervisor listened patiently, as did I.
"You know," the man said, "when it's busy is when we need our flier advantages the most."
And I thought he had an excellent point.
The supervisor called over one of the workers. The employee said he was told to open the line up to everyone by someone "down there" and he pointed to the other end of the terminal.
The supervisor disappeared in the darting school of customers as she made her way "down there."
Soon I saw the line behind me shorten. It was apparent that the customer had won his case. It didn't help him, because United didn't remove us who were already in the line. That might have caused a bit of backlash. Probably a good call.
But they prevented any other non-premier fliers from joining the privileged.
So at the beginning of all of this, some supervisor saw the numbers of customers, empathized with them and responded out of compassion. Good intentions, yes, but the compassion was misplaced.
The supervisor needed to go a little bit deeper; consider it a little longer. He or she saw it from one vantage point, not the other, saw the surface problem and reacted.
He or she didn't ponder the entire issue and see the whole canvas. This is what I call secondary empathy. There's a certain revelation in the first blush, but the larger picture comes into focus with the second and sometimes third.
You may wonder if I voluntarily got out of the line when I realized I was in the wrong one.
Are you kidding? I was like twenty feet from the Promised Land! I hunkered down, shut my mouth and shuffled through.
Hey, it wasn't my decision to put me in that line. | 
