One helpful employee is calling out to everyone,
“Global Entry right here, everyone else… Long line”.
I freeze while the crowd surges around me to take their spot in the “long line.“ I see one woman walk up to the row of 10, EMPTY, Global Entry machines. She stands there for just a moment and next thing you know a receipt prints out and she is…
Done!
And then I feel it…the small pull of intuition that says, “Try.“
I step forward and attempt to START explaining my complicated situation to the attendant but he just rushes me to a machine and tells me to scan my face and passport.
I do. It doesn’t work.
He says to try the second passport. I do. It doesn’t work either.
I didn’t really expect it to work but I felt like I was supposed to try.
Next thing he’s turning me around and pointing for me to walk down an open lane to a customs agent booth to “sort this out”.
Doing this has me walk past the 200+ people that are all trapped in the endless customs line. This includes captains in their flight uniforms!
I get to the head of the line and the agent that I’m waiting for has his back turned to me and is HAPPILY in conversation with a female employee.
I stand on my red line patiently and happily because… I’m not even supposed to BE here. I’m grateful for this chance.
It turns out, that this customs agent apparently adores the employee he’s talking to and he is NOT going to turn around. I stood there for about four minutes.
Now you have to picture the scene.
Me standing at the head of a completely empty line waiting for a single agent who won’t turn around. You can’t make this stuff up!
To my right, there are 200 exhausted people waiting for the three customs agents in their little booths to handle ALL of them.
While waiting, I can see that the customs agent working the crowd has spotted me and is glaring at his negligent coworker.
After a few more minutes of this, the agent with the crowd stops his ENTIRE line and calls me forward and around, out of the neglected express line and to his little booth.
I give him my old passport (wrong name), new passport and old Global Entry card (wrong name). That’s all I have.
In 2 minutes, after a lot of typing he slides all my documents back
with 3 words: “Try it again”.
What he does NOT say is any of the following:
1. You need an appointment to do this.
2. You need court certified documents to do this.
3. You need to not cut in front of 200 other people to do this HERE.
Just…Try it now.
I walked back past the same hundreds trapped in line.
Whatever he did, worked so well that I didn’t even need to scan either passport. It just scanned my face and gave me a “You are good to go receipt!”
In my head, I’m praising the miracle of ALL these moments and try not to look smug or elated or have any facial expression that might attract attention that the result I got, was not the result I should’ve gotten!
Dogs & Drugs
I now have to collect my bags. And I literally cleared that section of customs faster than I can get in and out of a women’s bathroom in a public sporting event!
And even though I’m super early, I barely wait and both bags arrive. Score!
But just before my bags come, I get to watch a Drug Dog alert on luggage on the conveyor belt! Cutest little beagle ever.
And sure enough the agent pulls the bag, opens it and literally pulls out shoebox size package of what appears to be marijuana wrapped in plastic wrap (and wrapped poorly I might add!).
I took a “selfie”. Look over my shoulder!
