[chenstyl]

At a small local airport the counter folks would not help you and will only send you to the self-serve kiosk. I was told by one of the employees that if they were to help me without going to the Kiosk it would somewhow reflect badly upon the crew at that airport.

[jimworcs]

Which small local airport? When? It can help to have a bit of detail. Delta are terrible for customer service, you might find the kiosk and little less rude than the employees, who appear to have had special training on how to irritate and upset their customers.

[pattis]

I dont know if this is the case or not. I used to work in a small regional airport for skywest and Northwest and we were constantly badgered by our boss to not check people in and that they (passengers) had to use the kiosk. Whenever we did we got reprimanded for doing so. I always thought that was crappy customer service. Not only that but when lines were long it took alot less time to check people in than kiosk usage. Manager would run percentages of the amount of people we checked in on computer, if it was over a certain amount we would get called into office and scolded. It went against station performance somehow. (probably the amount of bonus $ for out boss) I know that does not help your situation. However it may not be lazy or useless employees, only the higher ups insisting on this and employees not wanting to lose their jobs.