My manager originally scheduled a 1:1 video meeting with me at at time when I’d be in transit to the airport tonight, so instead, I agreed to chat with her over video at 8:30pm ET. I usually never take any calls that late, but I figured.. she really wanted to sync before I left the country, and I’d feel better leaving the country knowing she wasn’t obsessing over my accounts while I was gone.

So I joined my Zoom meeting with her tonight from the American Airlines First Class lounge at JFK. She asked me where I was, and I told her I was in the AA airport lounge.

“Wow! I never fly a class high enough to get lounge access” she exclaimed.

“Well…” I began with a smile on my face. “It’s not the class of your ticket that matters as much as it does your airline status with American. I have access because I have executive platinum status with AA.”

She had a stunned look on her face, probably not sure how to react to what I just told her and how I kind of schooled her. It’s so awkward for me having these conversations with much older people at work because they’re probably all wondering how I got all these miles given that my work trips definitely don’t amount to over 100,000 miles flown per year… and then they’re also probably wondering how I have more status and miles flown than they do.