Our only Christmas travel problem was self-inflicted.

My husband, Andrew, and I somehow managed — while juggling voucher codes that had to be used on separate transactions — to book Andrew and our son on a 10 a.m. flight to Phoenix and my daughter and I on a noon flight to Phoenix.

Our son was obsessed with assigning blame. “So,” he would ask in the weeks leading up to our flight, “how exactly did you book two different flights?”

He would not accept that it was just a miscommunication.

“But,” he would continue, “who do you think got the wrong flight?”

This is not helpful; I would remind him, hoping he’d drop it before forcing me to admit that I booked the second flight, so really, it was my mistake.

The inconvenience was not as large as you would think, considering, and compared to many people, we were downright lucky. Our flights were on time, security lines were long but moved quickly, and we somehow managed to miss the storms in Denver with perfect timing.

I feel bad for those who were not so lucky — either they never got to their intended destination for the holidays, or they were stranded somewhere away from home. The results of this could be devastating. Maybe it was the last family gathering to say goodbye to a dying loved one, or maybe their job isn’t flexible, and missing out on a week of work has immense financial consequences.

But I feel just as bad for the employees of the airlines who were working over the holidays.

When we arrived at Denver International Airport, the lines to drop pre-paid checked bags with Frontier were long. We thought we were in the right line because we had car seats to drop that needed a special tag. The Frontier employee who told us we were in the wrong line was frazzled and stressed, and it was only 7 a.m.

“Are you sure?” Andrew asked, pointing out that the car seats didn’t have tags.

“I guess you can just stand in whatever line you want to,” she snipped. We moved to the other line, where another frazzled employee let us check a bag even though it was more than 4 hours before my noon flight — we were grateful to be able to stick together through security. Here a Frontier employee actually helped us avoid a small consequence of my mistake — having to hang out for several hours outside of security to drop a bag.

On the way home, a Southwest employee brushing her teeth in the airport bathroom was ridiculously cheerful to my daughter, giggling with her about the soap dispenser. I wanted to give her a hug.

All of this is a long way of saying that working in customer service is perhaps never quite as daunting as when your services are needed the most.

We could all do a little less trying to assign blame for errors and mistakes that are not the fault of those working on the front lines of businesses and more time focusing on the tradeoffs we make.

I, for one, am grateful that discount airlines exist, making it possible for our family of four to travel without breaking the bank. We don’t need a soda on the flight, and only one of us is uncomfortable in the small seats, and Andrew says it’s worth the money we save.

I don’t mind the inconveniences of flying Frontier — they literally closed down their customer service call center instead relying on an online chat system — because we save hundreds of dollars on our flights.

I do feel bad that the company seems to be stretching the limits of what employees can endure. I’d be willing to pay a bit more to ensure that those checking luggage, working the chat line, and sizing up bags at the gate to make sure it doesn’t exceed the size for a free bag have the support they need to make their jobs a little less horrible. People get angry when they are told they can’t board the plane without spending another $100 for their carry-on bag. I understand the policy, but if Frontier is going to enforce the policy so strictly, gate agents need more help to proactively approach passengers before boarding begins and encourage them to size their bags early and make adjustments as needed.

One woman lost it in front of my kids in line at Thanksgiving and declared she’d wear all of the (expletive) clothes in her oversized duffle if she had to. Whoa, now, bring it down a notch, lady.

Perhaps we all could take a lesson from my astute son and ask ourselves “Who exactly is to blame for this situation?” Sometimes, uncomfortably, the answer is me — I booked the wrong flights.

With the Southwest meltdown and the extra fees with Frontier, the answer is some combination of the C-suite employees skimping on flight scheduling software or coming up with the luggage policies. Sometimes it can also be the fault of the person who didn’t read the fine print rules for Frontier luggage charges — it’s actually posted largely in several emails before the flight and again on the boarding pass when you check in online for the flight.

But with rare exceptions, travel problems are most certainly not the fault of the gate agent just trying to make a wage that is likely barely enough to get by in Denver these days.

Megan Schrader is editor of The Denver Post opinion pages. Email mschrader@denverpost.com.