Where to begin???
In one city I know of...
We cant even get radios that work for all the supervisors/agents to use, forget about giving one to the flight attendants. We try to have every RSS/CSS with a radio and the Express gate also gets two radios for their ops. The counter has a radio that is sometimes listen only and baggage has no radio.
The readers are supposed to eliminate dupe seats so that shouldnt be a problem. The crew must get the captain to radio ops who in turn calls the gate.
When the overheads are full, the bags pile up outside the door of the plane until the agent comes down to close out the flight.
The seating indicator must be changed by someone for every flight to get the computer to allow seating of nonrevs when the flights are open. It depends on the city/agent working the flight. I know our coordinator will usually go in for the day when the flights have 20-30 seats open and drop it to at least allow employees to be seated. Sometimes when they are wide open (which isnt very often), they'll even drop it for companions to be seated at checkin. In a hub with hundreds of flights, I doubt this is high on their list and by the time the agents start working the flight, most nonrevs have probably already checked in. It does make it easier though if they can remember to lower the seating level.
As I've said before, the problem is going to come from all of the things that happen at the podium that people dont think about. Someone loses their ticket, they checked in and didnt get an eticket, yet they've made it to the gate anyway, people look at their boarding cards and finally notice they arent sitting together, someone wants to upgrade, the flight is oversold, standbys, "I just have a question since you arent busy", etc......
Thank goodness many days are not that bad, but with 1 agent at the gate, I feel like the chances for that are going to climb....