But, but, it’s the account of ONE person.
One lonely, bored person looking for something, anything
to complain about to fill up her word-count.
Something OUTRAGEOUS(!) and governmental
Yeah, I remember that guy, thanks for all the dirty socks I got from nasty airport floors…
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But if its their sole (pun intended) purpose to prevent these things, then why didn’t anyone think about somebody sneaking explosive onto the plane in their shoes? I think the apropo phrase is Security Theatre
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Maybe the Customs were worried they were smoking the banana skins? Just say No!
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Remember the under ware bomber? But some how, a miracle of epic proportions, we all are still going through security with our under wares on…
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Wife and I were coming back from Jamaica holiday and transferred customs in Atlanta. The little beagle sniffed out my wife’s handbag where she was carrying a basket weaved from dried palm leaves that we bought on the beach.
We were shunted over to secondary inspection and the officer there was about to let us go when another officer got involved. They started arguing about whether dried palm leaves were considered contraband or not. One thought yes, the other thought no. A supervisor finally came over and said yes, we had to surrender the item.
I don’t mind the fact that protecting our agriculture and environment from invasive species is a thing - I totally understand and support the mission. I DO mind the fact that even the officers involved don’t know the rules and guidelines and that the enforcement seems to be completely arbitrary.
The funny thing is that while they were arguing over the basket in my wife’s handbag they completely neglected to check our suitcase and missed the other identical basket tucked away safely inside.
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We fly a lot. On our last international flight through SeaTac, our son who was 17 months old and had just woke up from a nap, was two bites away from finishing his Delta Airlines provided toddler sandwich when we walked into the customs baggage area. They gave him the sandwich as he was leaving the plane. They pulled us aside and yelled down at our son that he should’ve declared the sandwich since it had a slice of ham in it. We asked if he could finish it and they said no so he started screaming. They took our passports and, with a screaming child, we were directed into the secondary screening area and were told that we’d probably be screened the next time we travel too. Awesome. I feel safer.
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If The New York Times writes something that Limbaugh or Hannity would read, it’s automatically wrong.
The basic event outline isn’t improbable. But the story as written in Reader’s Digest has many hallmarks of “SEO optimized content” that make a lot of it seem unlikely to have occurred as reported in the piece.
This is the clear message and it’s very disturbing. I used to regularly travel to a rural region that had endemic hoof and mouth disease, and even though I live in an urban area, my state is primarily agricultural. Every time I would return I would carefully wash my shoes, use strong disinfectant on the soles, and pack them separately in a plastic bag, then tell customs I wanted them to dip my shoes when I returned. They always just looked at me like I was stupid. So I stopped telling them. Then eventually I stopped cleaning my shoes.
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Public safety officials in Hawaii are wary of false alarms and legit tsunami warnings that warn against waves that -when they do arrive- turn out to be comical underachievers. They’re worried that enough such noise will get people to stop taking these warnings seriously, and eventually people will get killed because of that.
It’s sort of a human version of antibiotic resistance. And low level fruit cops who like to jerk people around can be just as damaging to their own cause, as an overblown tsunami warning.
But then, power for its own sake is always bad news, no matter the context.
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This is kindof bullshit. Fruits are on the restricted list, not the prohibited list. It’s up to the customs agent whether the box of citrus seedlings (likely no) or the banana you brought for lunch on the plane (likely yes) are going to be let in. In neither case, are you (or this clickbait author at Readers Digest, apparently) fined like you would be if it were a bottle of roofies or absinthe or wild boar meat. Personally, when i’ve checked the “visited a farm in a foreign country” box i’ve ended up on the secondary screening line and every time the people there were extremely clear about what they were looking for and why and they were pretty nice about it. Maybe i’m a little more polite than this lady or something?
Readers Digest is what made me absolutely LUST to see Night of the Living Dead when in JrH. They loathed it sooooooo much, it had to be good. It was/is.
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Really? I know you can do better than this.
Um, yeah it is!
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Hm, I think I thought this once.
And said it, up the thread.
It was all too easy for me to believe that this was done because of mindless, robotic security theater- that similar to how the TSA goes nuts at an image of a gun on a t-shirt, her mere use of the word “banana” was seen as just as much of a threat as a real, physical banana, and that was enough to classify her as “the enemy” and treat her like dirt. It’s to the point where it’s actually more surprising that they could have had a legitimate reason for holding her up (although still absolutely no excuse for outright refusing to answer her questions). Incompetence, corruption and power trips are what’s expected now, rather than the exception.
Really? Then what do straight-up legal, nothing to hide people say?
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Under where?
Seems like each encounter while flying is a crap shoot.
At any moment I could be treated like royalty (hey, I got TSA precheck!)
or with simple respect, indifference, or as a criminal.
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