Not an excuse for not being up to date with Federal law re homeland security and processing passengers.
If you want to deal only with the brightest and the best you’ve got to pay for it. Your friend used an ID that’s owned by less than 1% of the populace that’s only been in existence for 2 years, and the guy at the discount airline had never seen it before. It’s really not that complicated. If you want the shlub getting paid half what the guy across the hall to know everything his better paid counterpart knows you’re barking up the wrong fiscal system, out here in capitalism if he was that good he’d BE the better paid counterpart.