So normally all I do is praise this airline and as a committed flyer, a-list preferred...

So normally all I do is praise this airline and as a committed flyer, a-list preferred I feel the need to express my disappointment with the way our gate agent handled a preboard situation. my wife traveling with me needed medical preboard for a specific seat on our flight this AM: FLL to BNA (****). We arrived at the gate at ***am for a ***am boarding call. At approximately ***am I advised the gate agent that no customer service agent was at the desk to coordinate a preboard request and to that he replied “I’ll call someone” ** minutes later when the flight was called for boarding, still no one had arrived at the gate. When I made him aware of the preboard need, he told me “sorry nothing I can do” now the fact is - I’ve had a gate agent solve situations before and he had an opportunity to accommodate the request, but chose to be a “NO” person as opposed to a “YES” person. By the time the flight already began boarding we had an off duty employee for southwest logging into the customer service computer and an on duty employee casually strolling the podium ** minutes late. We all know that customer service agents are supposed to be staffed well in advance of the flight to accommodate boarding related issues. Frankly if I was Gary Kelley I’d about hit the roof based on the complete insolvency and “lack of luv” today. I’ll fly more than *** times a year with this airline. Let alone because wife and I were separated it poses quite an issue saving a seat and bin space and seemingly having to be the customer who is holding a seat. So you see by the employees being late for one and the gate agent being completely non accommodating, I was coerced to go against seating policy and held a seat for my wife. When I did board and notified the gate agent about filing a complaint he shrugged it off like no big deal. I must tell you I was really disappointed in today’s events and it did put a bit of a wedge in between Southwest and this ALP customer.