The appraiser said, “I’m sorry but it isn’t that simple. This could be a criminal case rather than just a matter of just paying for a mistake.”
By this time the businessman had wiped the smile from his face. He was beginning to sweat. He lowered his voice and said, “Let me speak to you privately.”
The inspector and appraiser took the traveller into a private office, where he apologized abjectly. He explained that he was trying to be a “wise guy.” He said he thought it would be amusing to see if he could bluff his way past Customs and he hadn’t realized the serious implications involved.
“He was a pretty shaken man when he left that office,” the appraiser recalled. “No criminal case was made against him but he did pay a stiff penalty.”
For the transgressions of the few, the great majority must undergo the inconveniences of delay in having their baggage inspected.
There is no doubt that the inspectors who arrive on the job out of sorts, grumpy and even rude make more enemies for the Customs Bureau in dealing with the public than a dozen Customs men could have made working in any other capacity.
Such an experience brought a protest from a Canadian, who wrote The New York Times in November, 1958, complaining of rude treatment by a churlish airport inspector. The inspector curtly demanded the Canadian’s bags be opened for inspection. Then without as much as a peek inside them, he ordered the bags to be closed in what the visitor termed “an exercise in official nuisance and an assertion of bureaucratic authority.” He added, “The trip began with irritation from this first contact with a representative of the United States....”
Baggage inspection—while it is only a small part of the overall Bureau operation—nevertheless is one of the most sensitive parts of the Bureau’s work, and officials are painfully aware of this fact. They are trying to eliminate the kind of patently absurd situation which inspired a New Yorker cartoonist to picture a stern, arms-folded Customs inspector at the U.S.-Mexico border facing a very pregnant young lady and saying, “That’s the rule, lady—if you got it in Mexico, you pay duty on it.”
The keeper of the law can hardly hope to win popularity contests. But most of the complaints against Customs spring from the average American traveller’s resentment of the baggage inspection. People simply don’t like to have a stranger poking about among personal belongings.
The Bureau has been seeking ways to speed up the examinations and to keep the public at least tranquil, if not happy, over the operation. Conveyor belts have been installed at examination counters at airports in New York, Miami, San Juan and San Francisco, and are planned at other major points of international travel. They have helped to cut down delays. Campaigns are conducted among employees to promote greater courtesy in dealing with the travelling public.