I’m travelling for business and making a connection in Los Angeles International Airport. I’ve just come off a thirteen-hour flight across the Pacific and I’m exhausted. I collect my bag from the carousel and head on through. They have an area where they check baggage for international arrivals making a connection, which is nice.

Employee: “Place your bag on the belt. Can I see your ticket, please?”

I hand my ticket over and lift my bag onto the belt. He works for a moment, then frowns.

Employee: “I’m sorry, but our printer isn’t working so I can’t print a tag for your bag. Since you’ve already paid, I’ll give you a receipt. You need to go to the service desk and they’ll check your bag.”

Me: “No worries. How do I get there from here?”

The directions he gives me seem solid and I follow them to the best of my ability. I arrive at another desk which is completely deserted, and a bored-looking lady is there to see me. I try to explain the situation to her.

Me: “Hi. I tried to check my bag at the international connection area but they couldn’t print my bag tag and told me to come to the service desk to get my bag checked. They gave me this.” 

I hold out the receipt. [Employee #2] ignores the receipt and looks at my bag.

Employee #2: “You need to go through security.”

Me: “I… can’t. I have things in there which means this bag needs to be checked, not taken as carry-on. I was directed here to get it checked?”

Employee #2: *Suddenly* “What have you got in it?”

I don’t understand why she would want to know.

Me: “Makeup, body wash…”

Employee #2: “They’re going to take it off you.”

We get the attention of another employee who comes over.

Employee #3: “What does she want?”

Employee #2: “She wants to take her makeup through security.”

Me: “No. If you’d just liste—”

Employee #3: “They’re gonna take it off you, honey.”

They’re not listening to me at all, just standing there and repeating over and over that I need to get rid of my stuff. This goes on for a while. I look past the employees to the other side of the room and see body scanners, tubs, and conveyor belts for taking bags through scanners. It looks like security screening is behind this “service desk.”

Me: “I think I’m in the wrong place. Is this the service desk?”

Employee #2: *Still ignoring me* “You need to throw your makeup out.”

Me: “I’m just going to go back.”

I left. When I found the actual service desk, my issue is resolved quickly. I get that I was in the wrong place, but all they needed to say was, “This isn’t the service desk,” or, “We can’t do that here,” and I might have realised a lot sooner and saved us all twenty minutes.

I’m from Australia and I’m on a business trip to the USA. I have a connection in Los Angeles International Airport. It’s been a few years since my last visit to the US, and airport security is much more relaxed in my home country. While I’m waiting in a queue to get through security, I hear screaming at the front of the queue.

TSA Agent: “YOU HAVE TO REMOVE YOUR SHOES! WE’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR A WHILE; HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW THIS?”

The TSA agent is a very young woman, currently screaming at a poor couple who are looking flustered and doubling back to put their shoes in a tub.

TSA Agent: “ARE YOU STUPID? CAN YOU READ? CAN YOU UNDERSTAND ME RIGHT NOW? HUH?”

The couple are clearly not from the US and probably haven’t been asked to remove their shoes before. There are no signs requesting that we do this. I’d forgotten this requirement myself but I quickly remove my shoes to avoid being screamed at.

TSA Agent: *Looks at me* “At least you’re not stupid.”

I said nothing and went through. I didn’t want to pick a fight and get cavity searched by this xenophobic a**hole. Now I wonder why this person was surprised that a queue of international travellers in an international airport didn’t telepathically know US security procedures? The American TSA is the rudest I’ve ever encountered.

My parents were visiting France; my father’s French was non-existent and my mother’s was weak at best. As they were moving through the airport, a woman approached them.

She said something in French my mother didn’t understand. My mom shrugged.

The woman started walking away and said in an exasperated voice, “I wish I could find someone who spoke English!”

My mother quickly chased her down and offered to help!

(My mom and I have a flight home to Canada scheduled to depart shortly before noon. Since we need to navigate public transit to get there and don’t want to risk making ourselves late, we wake up in the morning, pack, and head straight to the airport without eating breakfast. Once we are checked in and through security, we decide to find our gate so we know where we need to be. It turns out it’s down a long hallway, far away from all the shops and restaurants, but this is the reason we checked before relaxing, to be aware of this. Both at the check-in desk and when purchasing our tickets, we are informed that there will be one meal served on the nine-hour flight and we need to purchase in advance to guarantee availability, but we will have the option to buy it on the plane. It’s about an hour before takeoff and half an hour until scheduled boarding, but knowing it’s a bit of a trek back to the restaurants, I approach the gate agent before we leave to find breakfast.)

Me: “Excuse me, I was just wondering if you know if the meal served on board will be lunch or dinner.”

Gate Agent: “You’d need to purchase that in advance to guarantee we have them for you. Did you prepay for your meal?”

Me: “No, but we were told we could purchase them onboard if we changed our minds.”

Gate Agent: “We will have some meals available for purchase with credit card, but once those are gone, they’re gone.”

Me: “Okay, but do you know if they’ll be serving around lunchtime or around dinnertime? I ask because we haven’t eaten breakfast yet and want to know if it’s worth us running to get some now or if we’d have to wait until supper if we didn’t?”

Gate Agent: “You’ll have to talk to the in-flight crew about that. But now, you need to come in and prepare to board, because we’re going to start boarding soon.”

(She gestures to a small area behind the desk, separated from the rest of the terminal by a few glass panes, with only chairs in it where a few dozen people are already seated.)

Me: “But the plane isn’t scheduled to leave for almost an hour. We’re just trying to find out how long we’d have to wait if we decide not to go get food now because we haven’t eaten yet.

Gate Agent: “Like I said, you’d have to talk to the in-flight crew about that. But if you leave now and we’re ready to go and you’re not back, we won’t wait for you.”

Me: “I’m not asking you to wait; boarding isn’t even scheduled to start for half an hour.”

Gate Agent: “But we will have to close the doors. If you’re not back and we have everyone accounted for, even if it’s before our scheduled time, we have to close the doors; we can’t wait for you.”

(My mom just nudged me and said we were going to get food. Like I’m sure most people could say, my mom is the first person to tell me I need to check my tone when I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, but even she couldn’t understand why the agent was being so rude to me because she thought my tone was perfectly polite the entire time. She also pointed out the biggest flaw in the agent’s logic, that if we weren’t back, obviously not everyone would be accounted for.

We got breakfast and food to take on the plane and made it back in plenty of time. Lucky we did, because the flight attendants — who were lovely — didn’t serve the meal until almost supper time. When we got to the next airport, I was held up for hours in customs and we had to be put on a later connecting flight, so my mom used the time to write an email to corporate complaining about an issue with delays she had had on the way to London and about the unreasonable gate agent in London.

She didn’t mention the customs thing because she understood, but for some reason they wrote her a long email back a week later explaining how sometimes customs chooses to do secondary inspection and it can take time and the airline has no control over it. She just left it, though, because they addressed her issue in a separate email and said they have no influence over gate agents in other countries, even if they are wearing the Canadian airline’s uniform.)

After visiting a friend in London, I’m heading back to Holland. Between the few and cheapest options, I end up with a flight departing at 7:00 am. So, I wake up at 4:00, get a cab to the airport to be two hours early at 5:00.

Everything is going according to plan… until about 6:30, when I hear that the flight will be delayed for about thirty minutes. That’s annoying, but these things happen.

At 7:15 there is an announcement that maintenance is taking longer. Please stand by.

At 7:45, the fuel filter needs to be replaced; this will take about an hour.

At 9:00, the fuel filter that arrived was the wrong type; they are searching for the right type.

At 9:45, the right filter has been found. Also, because of the long wait, I get a coupon that buys me a cup of tea and a cookie. Wow.

At 10:30, the filter has been replaced; now they need to check whether it works.

You get the pattern. In the end, instead of landing just before lunch, I end up landing just before dinner.

As I walk into the terminal, the first thing I see is a poster for the airline I’ve used with their slogan: “Why are you still here?” Ironic and infuriating.