Article: Airport Disease: Enter Airport, Exit Manners

[Ade]

Good article @AFF Editor - reminds me of a situation on the reverse. Security staff acting harsh/rude.

I may have mentioned this before, not sure. At SYD International in July this year. There are reno works going on so there is a changes to the pax flow to security, reduced number of smart gates leading to a pile up etc, utter chaos. Anywhoo, I show up, in line to be allocated to a security line number. Got allocated to number 5 (which is closer to the scanner). A super friendly security guy on the other side advising pax to empty pockets, one bag per tray etc etc. All went well, except that I forgot to put my mobile in the tray and had it in my pocket - my bad. Was distracted for some reason - no excuse.

I walk to the 360 scanner and one of the staff point out that there could be a mobile device in my pocket. Oopsie - I made a rookie mistake for a seasoned (somewhat) traveller. I realised my mistake, apologise and was going to go back to queue and wait for a security line number assignment. The friendly security guy (from earlier) saw this and asked me to come to top of the line and drop my phone into a tray. As I was approaching, another security lady (who was assisting wheelchair pax) bumped into my spot and grabbed a tray. The security guy sees this and he gestures me to drop my phone into the tray that the security lady grabbed. Now, in hindsight, I should have thought - the tray was not for me. But because the security guy gestured me to, I thought it was for me. Then security lady got real mad with me - took my phone, threw it towards me and said "grab your own tray". I was shocked. I said "sorry, didn't mean to take your tray, the security guy gestured me to use this one". She did not like my response I think and she proceeded to load the items of the wheelchair pax on to the tray and shoved it towards the security guy. He didn't say a word. He waited for the wheelchair pax to finish their work. Then he gestured me to take another tray to put my phone. And off I went - a bit confused, but more worried that I was misunderstood, when I was only following a security person's directions. Took me a bit of QF J lounge time to recover, but didn't let it spoil my o/s trip in anyway. Had a shadow on the QF to BLR and a smooth sail to MAA afterwards.

Anyways, the cookie crumbles, thusly and life goes on.

 

[LionKing]

Good article @AFF Editor - reminds me of a situation on the reverse. Security staff acting harsh/rude.

I may have mentioned this before, not sure. At SYD International in July this year. There are reno works going on so there is a changes to the pax flow to security, reduced number of smart gates leading to a pile up etc, utter chaos. Anywhoo, I show up, in line to be allocated to a security line number. Got allocated to number 5 (which is closer to the scanner). A super friendly security guy on the other side advising pax to empty pockets, one bag per tray etc etc. All went well, except that I forgot to put my mobile in the tray and had it in my pocket - my bad. Was distracted for some reason - no excuse.

I walk to the 360 scanner and one of the staff point out that there could be a mobile device in my pocket. Oopsie - I made a rookie mistake for a seasoned (somewhat) traveller. I realised my mistake, apologise and was going to go back to queue and wait for a security line number assignment. The friendly security guy (from earlier) saw this and asked me to come to top of the line and drop my phone into a tray. As I was approaching, another security lady (who was assisting wheelchair pax) bumped into my spot and grabbed a tray. The security guy sees this and he gestures me to drop my phone into the tray that the security lady grabbed. Now, in hindsight, I should have thought - the tray was not for me. But because the security guy gestured me to, I thought it was for me. Then security lady got real mad with me - took my phone, threw it towards me and said "grab your own tray". I was shocked. I said "sorry, didn't mean to take your tray, the security guy gestured me to use this one". She did not like my response I think and she proceeded to load the items of the wheelchair pax on to the tray and shoved it towards the security guy. He didn't say a word. He waited for the wheelchair pax to finish their work. Then he gestured me to take another tray to put my phone. And off I went - a bit confused, but more worried that I was misunderstood, when I was only following a security person's directions. Took me a bit of QF J lounge time to recover, but didn't let it spoil my o/s trip in anyway. Had a shadow on the QF to BLR and a smooth sail to MAA afterwards.

Anyways, the cookie crumbles, thusly and life goes on.

I would say next time grab the security woman's name and make a formal complaint.
This is simply bullying customers and must not be tolerated.
She should be immediately fired.

 

[jrfsp]

At least by and large Australian airports are an oasis of tranquility compared to many of those overseas, especially compared to the US and parts of Europe. Usually breeze through the airport in minutes (even intl - departure at least)

 

[Forg]

At least by and large Australian airports are an oasis of tranquility compared to many of those overseas, especially compared to the US

At least the regime in the US is actively fixing all the problems at their airports ... by installing pull-up bars.

 

[Ade]

I would say next time grab the security woman's name and make a formal complaint.
This is simply bullying customers and must not be tolerated.
She should be immediately fired.

Yea, I understand what you mean. But sometimes I feel like, do I want to take this further and cause more mental stress/agony etc for myself? ... If I was the boss/coworker and I witnessed this, I'd definitely have a chat with the employee. As a customer on their premises, I did feel bad for being misunderstood - and I was hoping to come out of it - so did not take any action .. KWIM?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Yea, I understand what you mean. But sometimes I feel like, do I want to take this further and cause more mental stress/agony etc for myself? ... If I was the boss/coworker and I witnessed this, I'd definitely have a chat with the employee. As a customer on their premises, I did feel bad for being misunderstood - and I was hoping to come out of it - so did not take any action .. KWIM?

But the thing is, we pay handsomely for all these services… from those provided by the airline at check-in, through to security and border control. Plus of course many countries charge a tax just to depart.

Airlines, airports and government services should reflect that these aren’t free. And the staff who think they’re ’doing us a favour’ should maybe take time to reflect on that.

 

[Forg]

Airlines, airports and government services should reflect that these aren’t free. And the staff who think they’re ’doing us a favour’ should maybe take time to reflect on that.

My comment here is intended as a potential part-explanation rather than an excuse … but people being paid minimally to do unpleasant jobs are surely even more likely to be “grumpy” when their entire unpleasant job is being exposed to mostly people doing something that their position probably means they can’t afford to do?

I was going to clarify that the “thing they can’t afford to do” is air travel, although now I think of it, being strip-searched by a surly rubber-gloved authoritarian probably also costs a fair bit of money if you’re paying for that to be done outside of the context of airport security …

 

[DejaBrew]

Sadly, I suspect most customer-facing jobs at an airport are thankless roles wherein the worker is likely to be subjected to all manner of poor customer behaviour. Individuals can only take so much of that before they "react". I'm certainly not excusing the behaviour because it's never appropriate, but I can definitely empathise with their situation.

Frankly, I believe everyone - airport/airline employee or customer/passenger - should be treated with respect and civility as a "baseline". It's really not that difficult (although for some, it clearly is ).

And the staff who think they’re ’doing us a favour’ should maybe take time to reflect on that.

Oh boy... I work in IT and that's tantamount to those co-workers who suggest to you that "....the only reason you've got a job here is because of the revenue we pull in as sales staff." The one time someone tried to pull that on me, I smiled and politely reminded them that they'd probably find it a little harder to pull in all of that revenue without their laptop, phone, email access, business applications etc, so they may want to have a nice little think about the importance of everyone's roles before opening their mouths again on the subject. As you can imagine, they backpedalled on the subject pretty quickly

 

[Forg]

Oh boy... I work in IT and that's tantamount to those co-workers who suggest to you that "....the only reason you've got a job here is because of the revenue we pull in as sales staff." The one time someone tried to pull that on me, I smiled and politely reminded them that they'd probably find it a little harder to pull in all of that revenue without their laptop, phone, email access, business applications etc, so they may want to have a nice little think about the importance of everyone's roles before opening their mouths again on the subject. As you can imagine, they backpedalled on the subject pretty quickly

Given that you’re a coffee, I’d have thought they’d need no reminder that they’d be a blubbering heap on the ground without you?!