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He was wearing shorts and not quite clean shirt. His most recent shower had failed him. Hot, irritable, he comes back across the bridge. He gets into a discussion with the person behind the glass. Something is not acceptable to him. The person signals the next one in line. This farang straight arms the Thai coming up to the window then rounds on the guard as he approaches. The farang turns back and begins yelling at the person behind glass.

All well and good. You all know the scenario. As I observed this I reflected back on pulling over a motorist first thing on my shift around 8 AM. In addition to my patrol I had a dozen house watches, a traffic mess down at the docks and a spate of new burglary reports. If I was lucky I would only have a 14 hour day that day.

Now I got a dick head appearing to claim it was his right to drive 45 MPH through a school zone with children present. No. He was yelling. Suggesting things anatomical and biological, in bad English. I assumed the booze on his breath was from the night before but I was reasonably certain he would still fail the breather test. I pulled the guy over just to warn him. I even called the boss before the roadside interview telling him I was doing a warning job. 'Hey, ###### YOU, ######' his newest contribution to the start of my day.

The guy yelling into the window at immigration looked like, smelled like, and was acting so much like that sunny morning interview.

How did this guy effect my attitude for the rest of the day?

I keep these thoughts in mind when I encounter the officials at immigration along with a quote from Bob Goldthwaite:

"It's not like when I was a kid I went up to my dad and said, 'Dad dad! When I grow up can I get a job where random ###### <deleted> blow me crap all day??'"

When one gets flack or things don't seem to be going right with the officials, one should keep in mind who else they have had to deal with recently.

We cannot read the date stamped on your visa so we are only going to give you 30 days. You have to go to ....

I looked the official dead in the eye, smiled a sincere smile and bowed my head. "At Chiang Mai? They will kow jai? Khup khun mak krap.

Just maybe the next person up to the window got cut a little slack because of my politeness.

In all fairness the poor buggers get crap from lots of lowlives at border points. First rule of life ' Don't argue with a guy in uniform '