Friday - November 04, 2011

thick heads abound

Martin Samuel, writing in the Daily Mail today, had two stories that hit home only because the wife and I can relate to the frustration felt by the subjects involved.
We’d been through much of the same in the last month.

With some hours before our flight back to London’s Heathrow airport, and after quickly clearing customs, we stopped for lunch one of the few restaurants at LAX.

Our waitress was a somewhat heavy, possibly middle aged (hard to tell) Oriental lady with fairly muddled Ringlish.  When my wife ordered an alcoholic drink, the dim wit insisted on an ID.  My wife is 66. At first we thought it was merely a joke or her way of being friendly. But no. She actually insisted on an ID.  There seems to be a thick headed dumb virus going around, because apparently as Martin reports, a market clerk insisted on an ID from a woman of 92.  People are being hired with little regard to their language skills, common sense is lost on them and their well speaking English natives in both our countries.
And then there’s the moronic thick heads at the US Immigration. Oh boy do I have a few things to say. But first ….

(For our American readers and others who may not have seen the term, an OAP is Old Age Pensioner.)

A 92-year-old asked for ID? I need a drink
By MARTIN SAMUEL

Diane Taylor, a 92-year-old great-grandmother from Harlow in Essex, went into her local One Stop shop for a bottle of whisky. She was asked for ID. Diane produced an over-60s bus pass, an OAP card and her pacemaker certificate, to no avail. As she did not have a passport or driving licence, her purchase was refused.

‘We are sorry for the inconvenience, but staff are required to ask all customers for ID,’ said a spokesman. He claimed the shop had to enforce a strict policy or risk losing its licence, although there is a simpler explanation.

Some people are just really, really thick.

Unfortunately, they often end up in the service industries most governed by regulations and without the wit to assess a situation on merit (a 92-year-old widow probably won’t have a driving licence, or carry a passport, particularly if she is only nipping out for a bottle of Famous Grouse).
It is beyond them to fathom that an OAP card is also proof a person is over 18, even if the precise date of birth is not displayed. This would take something called common sense. It is an increasingly rare commodity.

THICK HEADS

And then there is this …. take a look.

Again, from Martin Samuel.

A short while ago, I had the misfortune to attempt to travel from London to Newcastle with British Airways. The helpful staff let me check in and pass through security, without revealing my flight had been seriously delayed, making the journey redundant. My remaining hope was to make a quick turnaround and drive north — but first I had to clear the airport. 

‘You can’t come back through here,’ said security. ‘You have to be escorted out.’ This is how I found myself, with a crowd of similarly stranded people, in front of a useless BAA official who was to be our guide. ‘How long will this take?’ asked a woman. ‘I won’t lie,’ said the useless one, ‘it might be around an hour and a half.’
She said we had to go through immigration. I reminded her, in considerably more measured tones than the situation deserved, that I was a domestic passenger. I wouldn’t have had to go through immigration if I had completed my journey successfully. I didn’t even need a passport to travel. So surely there must be another way for me to exit the airport, without joining the end of a long queue of international travellers?
‘I don’t want confrontation,’ she said. And there our argument stalled. Whatever logic I attempted to inject, she didn’t want confrontation. Not that there was any.
There were just frustrated people looking to get on with their day, with the thick and useless forces of authority in league against them. The rules made no sense, but could not be questioned in any way.
Eventually, I went home. Somewhere, no doubt Diane Taylor got a drop of the hard stuff. Maybe if the world was given its long overdue intelligence upgrade, at 92, she wouldn’t have such need for it.

The wife and I visited home (California) last month. Perhaps for the last time. Nothing’s writ in stone, and I won’t go into the whole thing here but will hold it for another post.  Suffice it to say tho that I think we’ll be looking for a home here in this politically correct lunatic asylum, where at least the civil servants who work for the immigration dept. are actually civil. Imagine that. What a difference between here and the thick headed, miserable, unhelpful stone faced shits at US Immigration at LAX.

Small example of tiny minds at work with lots of authority. And no, this isn’t the reason for my rant above. Just one of things I don’t understand fully perhaps.

Any of you who’ve ever stood in a long line, especially at a busy airport, are familiar with the ropes that form a snake like line and move at a snail’s pace.
Well, due to the fact that my wife upon handing her passport over for inspection, was taken to an interrogation room where I wasn’t allowed, and was the last to be interrogated by the KGB therein, by the time she was through there was hardly a soul left in that terminal.  No kidding.  Like something outta Sci-Fi.
Imagine an empty terminal at LAX. Even the immigration inspection booths were empty. All gone. The only luggage in sight is yours, there’s no noise anymore, no voices or conversation or the rattle of the baggage conveyor. It too is still as a tomb.

So then .... here we are. The very last to leave. Hauling some carry stuff and pushing a baggage trolley we come to the exit part, there’s only one policeman and since there was not a soul to be seen, instead of walking the roped off snake like thingy, I thought it would be quicker to simply go under the rope and straight out.  Made sense to us.  But NO!  Comrade officer Herr Himmler told us to start at the far side and come through as it would normally be done, if there were lines of people there. 

It wasn’t that it took long or was a hardship on us. Of course it wasn’t.  But it just seemed so damn pointless.  Like the officials themselves.
That’s just a minor thing of no great importance.  But there’s so much more that this one last episode at LAX just stands out as another example of the unhelpful, mindless attitude exhibited by these automatons.

-30-

Posted by peiper     on 11/04/2011 at 01:31 PM   
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