Your inside voice probably just blasted out a simple question about two seconds ago…’why’?

Before I give you what you ‘want’ to know, let me start off with what you ‘need’ to know:

I consider myself to be a law-abiding citizen. I also consider myself to be someone who takes his fare share of flights (of the airplane kind), be it for personal or business reasons.

What’s ironic, at least to me, is that when you velcro those two statements together and show up at the Vancouver International Airport for a routine trip to the US on business, something goes horribly wrong. Dirty criminal wrong.

Now, what I’m about to rant about has, in my mind, everything to do with customer service. Regardless of who you are, when you travel abroad, you are sorted into orderly lines and made to shuffle one-by-one through the customs/border patrol.

And when you are performing this eloquent dance of the cattle being led to the slaughterhouse, remember, you are about to receive service from an individual who is wearing a gun, a bullet-proof vest (in most cases), a night-stick/baton (in some cases), and probably a whole host of other items that are capable of delivering either pain or a good deal of discomfort.

Speaking of pain and discomfort, don’t even get me started about Robert Dziekanski (who would have turned 41 yesterday) and the taser incident. That’s a whole other story that had a very tragic ending and isn’t directly related to what I’m talking about; however, it did involve the Vancouver International Airport and their ’security’ force. Back on track…

To give you some flavour, I’ve probably been on more flights over the past two years than there are weekend retirement home BINGO games going on at any one point across all of North America (give or take a few). Cut to a few weeks back and picture me going through US customs at the Vancouver International Airport. A non-event, right? Wrong.

For the first time ever, I was flagged for ‘further discussion’ with customs officials. Why?

• Was it because I was honest and told them what I did for a living (am a consultant)?; or

• Was it because on this day, our badge-wearing interrogator with an arsenal of nonsense attached to his person, didn’t like me/my response/my shirt?

When I stop and think about it, it was either the fact that I’ve gone through this song n’dance about 47 times in the recent past and I should have known that the 48th time would be the straw that broke RoboCop’s back, or…the shirt.

My feeling, at this point of the I-just-was-flagged-by-US-customs-and-am-about-to-spend-the-next-two-hours-waiting-to-say-exactly-the-same-thing-to-another-person-who-has-obviously-had-an-upsetting-day/week/life-and-miss-my-flight dance, kind of reminded me of what floog went through. His theme, and I think it’s well put: ‘why-me?’

So, I kind of gave away the punch line there. No matter. The end result:

• I was forced to sit in a staging area for more than an hour and listen to more badge-people sit around and talk about the box set of Seinfeld DVDs that one of them had just purchased for a half-hour straight (I kid you not)…his favourite episode was the close-talker, by the way;

• I was granted an audience with the Wizard (after my plane had taken off);

• I repeated the same discussion I had an hour earlier to another angry person who doesn’t enjoy looking at people when he talks to them, apparently (he also had a turquoise ring on almost every one of his fingers…which scared me) ;

• I was told I need a [insert bizarre alpha-numeric number here] visa to do ‘consulting work’ in the US;

• I mentioned I’ve never needed one before and I wasn’t there to do ‘consulting work’;

• I was told I need a [insert bizarre alpha-numeric number here] visa to do ‘consulting work’ in the US;

• I praised him for his insight and apologized profusely;

• I was given ‘the stamp’ of passage;

• I was reminded to know better;

• I was told to practice my piano;

• I left;

• I got on the last flight outta dodge and touched down in the US very late.

Fortunately my week in the US was very productive and my brain probably put this experience on spin cycle and washed it out. I didn’t even flinch on my way back into Canada…so nice, eh?

The morale of this story, if there even is one, is that in situations where you have done nothing wrong and what’s more, KNOW you have done nothing wrong, why is it that those who have the ‘authority’ to turn your life upside down for a few minutes to a few hours, do?! No idea…all I know is that it sucks and you have to grin and like it or it will get a lot worse.

You want to know what else stood out from my experience with the badge-people? They asked for my business card….twice. I wonder if they need any consulting?

darren