Letter to the Predators (1/17/05)

Harassment at Los Angeles International Airport

LAX Community Relations Division
8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 100
Los Angeles, CA 90045

To Whom It May Concern:

On January 16, 2005, I drove to the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to pick-up a family member who was scheduled to arrive on an Alaska Airlines flight. Seconds after pulling up at Alaska’s baggage claim terminal, I was met by several men in olive green uniforms, who began to waive me off, telling me rather rudely that I was not allowed to stop in front of the baggage claim area. “Keep moving, keep moving,” they shouted out to me at once, as I searched the swarm of people exiting the vicinity.

After making sure I didn’t see my family member, I drove around the airport as I had been so impolitely instructed to do. Finally, I made my way back to the Alaska terminal where there were still planeloads of travelers exiting the double doors with their luggage. While I inched down the lane in my car, reviewing the faces, looking for the familiar, another representative of the LAX little green men association banged upon my car window with some sort of extremely large flashlight. With an angry stare, the man yelled at me to move my car out of the area and drive around the airport. Without a word, I made my way around the airport, again, but this time I began to get really angry. Not the angry you get when someone slaps the last sour cream and onion potato chip out of your hand, but the angry that caused me to feel my blood boil throughout my body.

Thinking that the third time would be the charm, I pulled up to the Alaska Airlines baggage area and happily spotted my family member waiting for me. There were five or six cars loading ahead of me, so I had to ease up slowly as each car left with its cargo. As I made my way down the lane to meet my soon-to-be passenger, I witnessed a very ignorant bully in a green LAX suit, scream at a man in a yellow vest to “MOVE.” The man being disparaged had just gotten out of his vehicle to open the trunk for his wife and two small children who were approaching from behind. Startled and seemingly scared from being yelled at, the man rushed back to his driver’s side in order to move his car; however, he could not drive forward due to the traffic. The LAX representative could see that the man could not move his car, and he could also see that the man’s passengers were approaching, yet he kept shouting at the man. Because he could not drive forward, the man attempting to pick-up his wife and kids, tried to back up and almost hit his family members in the process. It was a very harrowing and completely unnecessary incident.

Seconds later, another LAX airport simpleton came up to my passenger side window and yelled at me to move my car. Clearly livid by this point, I rolled down my window and screamed, How the f*** am I supposed to pick-up a passenger if you are telling me I can’t stop and pick them up? The LAX employee retorted, “because this is a f****** loading zone!” Exactly what I am going to do… load, I said, rolling up my window in his face. I began to see red and I became so distressed that my inner-most feelings were begging me to get out of my car and slap the man in green, yet common sense and the potential for jail time caused me to yield.

I have traveled to many places – post September 11th, yet I have never encountered such ridiculous treatment of customers at an airport in all of my days. Eventually, America might become a police state, but that hasn’t happened yet. All the same, the bullying I witnessed by LAX employees upon people picking up passengers was apprehensible. I am a United States citizen, yet I was treated like a terrorist by these safari hat crowned rental cops. Yes, there were signs posted that said “no parking and no waiting,” but what does that mean? Does it mean that if your 91-year-old grandmother is rolling out to your car in a wheelchair that you can’t wait for her to arrive at your vehicle? Does it mean that granny should lift weights to build up arm strength so she can roll up next to your moving car and jump from wheelchair to vehicle - Jackie Chan style? What about her luggage? Should you drive around twice so she can throw the luggage in on the first trip and then heave her way into her seat when you come around again?

I would like to understand the absurdity that substantiates how people picking up passengers can’t stop to pick up passengers, yet town cars, taxicabs and limousines can sit and wait for fares until the cows come home. I think a terrorist would use a taxicab to blow something up before he or she would use my Denali. If the concern is so great about people picking up passengers, why let cars into the airport at all? Why not just shuttle all travelers (from Paris Hilton to the man with no feet) to a vacant lot and dump them and their bags on the sidewalk? That way, granny can at least take her time.

The idiocy and harassment that I witnessed at LAX was surely not an aberration. During my dizzying drives around the interior circumference of the airport, I saw many unhappy drivers being accosted by the green men in safari hats. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the airport arrival dock is not a safari site, and the people picking up friends and family members are not potential game for the little men in green to prey upon. This situation needs to be formally addressed immediately. GAME OVER!


Sincerely,
Waset Regir
author.traveler.united states citizen