DYKWIA and the Etiquette of External Elite Indicators

bless you if you have never encountered people exhibiting overt DYKWIA (do you know who i am?!?!) behavior because THEY ARE L33T, GODDAMMIT! (here’s a great example if you can’t imagine it.) however, there are more subtle ways of showing you’re special, the elite luggage tags.

recently, United started sending out yellow luggage handle wraps* to 1K members. i made 1K and didn’t get one so i politely DYKWIA’d myself to the 1K email line (aka 1KVoice) and received it today.

* “It will help identify your luggage quickly — especially when locating gate-checked, green-tagged bags on the jet bridge.”

i have no problem with elite luggage tags and a bit of quiet DYKWIA; in fact, i display them proudly (but i never wave them, or my card, around!). my question is, when do you take them off? my gut says to remove them when your status expires. my scheming brain, though, says eh, what’s the harm in leaving them on? if they wanted you to take them off, they would label them with the eligible year, right? 😀

this will be my decision in 2015 when i switch over to the Milenomics Be (not Bring!) Your Own Elite program. hopefully i will status match to another airline and have a new tag, but if not, and i’m elite-less for a bit, what say you? leave them on? take them off? (i realize if you’re reading this, chances are you have been and forever will be perennially elite at some level on one airline or another [or more], but what WOULD you do?)

i wish i kept my previous elite tags from various airlines for posterity’s sake, but sadly they are in a landfill somewhere, except for my current Air France tags (thanks status match), which i’ve never used. speaking of Air France and luggage tags, i love love love the (non-elite) KLM custom ones they offer every now and then but they’re so flimsy (i’ve gone through several already).

for what it’s worth, the “Remove Before Flight” tags are the best for showing off, especially since they never expire! these, from the Star Alliance MegaDO, aren’t going anywhere!