The dark side of Toronto

While I was ready to write a glorious article about my visit to Toronto, my exit from Toronto Airport was not a happy experience. How nasty experiences can shed a gloomy light on the happiest of times.
At the point of entry into Canada, as the first immigration officer talks with you, one immediately sees how this cosmopolitan city has absorbed people from almost every continent.

I took this as a good sign, thinking what the dedicated Indians, the smiling, radiant Africans, the customer service-oriented Far East nations can bring with them to these parts of the world. A perfect picture of unity in diversity. Alas, except for a few, most of the staff, especially in the airport are far from anything even close to proper customer service.

Immigration officers were pleasant, especially when they saw my almost full passport and called me a world traveller. In this part of the world, self-check-in machines are sometimes the only option, for first time users such as myself, sometimes a small mistake can result in having to repeat the procedure, this caused delays to us and inconveniencing others. So I asked for help from a United Airlines staff, she replied harshly that I should do it on my own. Before answering her, I saw another staff shouting at an elderly passenger that she would not board because he talked loudly to one of the staff! I swallowed my anger and took double the time to finish my boarding procedure.
At this point, I did not know that this was the beginning of one of the worst trips that I have had in more than three decades.

The arrogant attitude of airport staff, security officers shouting at passengers as if they were criminals, did not help matters. Our trip got delayed and caused us to lose our next connection, it is the exact time one needs a staff to talk to, no one was there, and an hour after we managed to find a way forward, all the recommendations offered were lacking and mostly wrong. At one point, as we were waiting to take our luggage from the same terminal to go to another, waiting time got close to three hours, fearing that we would lose our new flight.

I went to United airlines baggage claim to follow up, as I reached the female staff was angrily talking on phone to a passenger, I could not believe the words she was using to tell him off. Again I decided to keep calm, by now it was clear that the days of the ‘client is king’ are gone forever.
When we finally sat in the plane to leave for the US, I wanted the trip to end. Partly, it was the airline’s fault but the logistics of the airport was a Canada affair.