Plenty of blame on both sides for this shameful incident.

This was not a case of refusing boarding, it was a case of removing passengers who had already boarded. It was not a case of overbooking, but of expecting employees to be given priority over passengers, at the very last minute. What kind of planning is that?

United should have other ways of getting its employees to their work other than bumping paying passengers. As others have pointed out, they could have gotten there by car in not much longer.

But that said, the consumer culture of "the client is King" has gotten out of hand when even a mature adult, a professional, thinks it is perfectly reasonable to react in this histrionic way to life's inevitable setbacks. What if the plane had been delayed for mechanical reasons or weather reasons, would he also have had a fit? He sounds like a diva. Is this how he deals with conflicts at his hospital? Is this now the accepted way of dealing with consumer disputes?