Last year I transited internationally at JFK. I arrived from Europe and was to go take a flight on CX metal to HKG (btw, before anyone asks why I would take such a long route to go to HKG -I was not on a mileage run - I had a RTW ticket and at the last minute my meeting in NYC got cancelled, so I flew straight to HKG).
With transit in the USA being so terribly organized, I had to go though immigration and pick my own luggage and go through customs in order to change terminals at JFK.
Problems started soon. I was stopped at customs and the agent started asking questions. I was responding in a normal way. He asked to see my ticket to HKG. I started to search for that ticket among the many that I had. Then he snapped "give me the whole thing". I nicely said "wait, there are too many tickets, i will give you the right one". his reply and in a bad snappy tone "i said to hand me the whole thing". now i became annoyed and in a sudden movement with an ugly look put the whole thing in front of him. now things started to really go down. he had no clue. couldnt find the ticket (i had many partially unused tickets, including a few RTWs with segments still valid). he said he did not understand and obviously expected a comment/answer from me. i said nothing. again he said "i do not understand, i can not find the ticket". Reply: "are you expecting an answer, because i heard no question?"
(i do not know how to make the story short as the whole incident lasted about 40 minutes).
Along the way we discussed why I had so many tickets bought in bangkok. Then he checked the exchange rate for the bath, trying to figure out the price of the ticket (it was a RTW in F). he said he had not seen anything like that (so many confusing tickets and such routings) in so many years working there. here i said "maybe because sophisticated rich people like me are not the people you usually interact with". ok i admit it, that was a nasty comment, but he was being an as**ole himself along the way. of course by then he was opening my bags, and bingo!!, i had a box of cuban cigars. when he tried to give me a hard time on this. i finally told him that i didnt care about the f***ing cigars, that he could keep them. that i was just trying to get to hkg and that he was delaying me and making me risk missing my plane to get the h*ll out of the usa. that because the screwy way the lousy airports in the usa work, no transfer of bags could be possible between different international flights in diffeent airlines. i didnt intend to bring the cigars into the usa, but etc. etc. etc. my final coment was along the way of i do not care about the cigars. take them, do whatever you want but decide whether you like me so much that you want to keep me in your country against my will, because if you leave it up to me, i will rush to get the h*ll out of here and fly to hkg asap. he called supervisor, conferred for about 5 minutes. came back and without lloking at me handed my documents back and said "go" and turned around.
under normal conditions i would have been less confrontational, but...i got annoyed and i thought i had a good response to the issue of the cuban cigars (i expected the airline to transfer the bags for me like they do at other airports) and i actually did not care about missing the flight as i was in no rush. i could easily have stayed a day in nyc -not that i wanted, but it would have been of no consequence.
probably i fit a strange profile: young, traveling first class, with british passport, but heavy spanish accent in english, living in singapore and with plenty of thailand, malaysia, hkg, china and venezuela stamps in the passport. i guess that could easily confuse them
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The trouble with resisting temptation is...that you may not get another chance :-)