Standing at the gate

This weekend is the busiest travel weekend of the year because of Thanksgiving. I flew home and back and had a wonderful time. I flew Southwest for the first time in about a year and after flying other airlines I realized why they have a boarding group and positioning number. Southwest does not have assigned seating so it never made sense to me why there was an order to board. Other airlines do have seating assignments, but it is a mess at the gate when they allow all people to board at once. Southwest has numbered poles by the gate to allow people to line up according to their boarding number to keep the gate area clear. I never realized how nice and clean this system was until today. It keeps people from standing in front of the gate during the boarding and deboarding process as well as moderates the flow of people into the plane. Kudos, Southwest, kudos.