1. When dealing with people who can arrest you, detain you, search you, confiscate your stuff or generally make your life miserable it is best to be polite.
2. When you are dissatisfied because you believe the number of people working is too small for the amount of people to be processed, do not complain to the people described above, about how incompetent the system is and how "since you are paid by my taxes you work for me!" The person working did not make up the schedule. If he did, then chances the reason that person is working is because someone didn't show up. He would love to have more people working, he just can't get them there magically.
3. 10 minutes in a customs line is not going to kill you.
4. If you feel you must complain about standing in a line for 10 minutes while the customs agent efficiently processed you, write a letter to someone when you get home. Even if he was incompetent (which he wasn't!) it's not like he's going to take your complaints to his boss and say, "Hey, boss, these people came through my line yesterday and they said I was an idiot. Will you fire me?" No, that information is going no where.
5. It just makes you look like a jerk. Really, it does.
6. My final travel tip--fly Swiss Air business class. Really. Wow. Such service I have never known.
I'm glad to be back. Regular blogging will commence once I start the laundry.
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3 comments:
Yes I have found when dealing with an official at a check point, it is best to be routine. By that you should view yourself as a form they are paid to process. You want them to move you from the inbox to the outbox as quickly as possible. You should therefore not draw attention to yourself. Forms that need attention usually end up in the "I'll get to later pile" or "I'd better dot the 'i's and cross the 't's" pile. You see if you need attention, you cut down the number of forms they process and so they must have something to account for the loss of productivity. The "Sorry boss, I had to do a cavity search on this guy so I didn't process as many people as usual" will be the more likely accounting rather than "Sorry boss, the traveller was upset at the long lines, so we had a quiet chat and I gave them a cold drink."
And for those who feel they shouldn't have to go through customs, I give you the customs declaration submitted when Apollo 11 returned from the moon. No one avoids customs.
JKB--Is that Customs form for real? Ha!
I think these are actually good tips for dealing with almost any type of similar waiting-in-line situation - patience and politeness never hurt.
And welcome back!
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