[Lobelia]

Well, I've never had any trouble but I'm not a well-travelled person. When I have gone through customs, I was a little intimidated, probably due to my lack of experience.

I'm sure people go through with bad attitudes & attract attention. I'm also sure that there are customs agents who are jerks for all kinds of reasons, none of them good or professional. I imagine that each place has its own workplace culture, and being a jerk might just be the encouraged (subliminal or otherwise) behavior.

How do I know this? Because people are people, and it seems to be a common phenomenon that jobs such as these tend to attract people who are willing to accept relatively low pay as long as they have some authority. Unfortunately, it's easy to give yourself little raises here & there with your authority, especially if you're not well supervised.

Of course, they're not all jerks. It's just that there are a lot of factors that can very easily contribute to abuse of power in these situations.