This was always super liminal to me because you're in this position so rarely and only for a moment.

In that case I imagine you start absolutely hating that place after a while. Considering the boarding and deboarding process is probably the most stressful part of that job outside of emergencies, not to mention they only start getting paid when the door closes (which is total bullshit that they can get away with that, apparently the airlines think they're not actually doing their jobs when they're busy wrangling 200+ passengers through the gate?)