A Canadian man was pepper sprayed because he wouldn’t turn his car off at the border when order to by a border guard. He wanted the guard to say please. The guard sprayed him. Finland has talking trashcans…what will they think of next. Finally, a Hawaiian hotel used trash to measure spending.
A Canadian traveler insisting on courtesy from a member of the Customs and Border Protection guards was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours. His only sin — asking the border guard to say “please” when he was asked to turn his car off during a search.
“I refused to turn off the car until he said please. He didn’t. And he has the gun, I guess, so he sprayed me,” said Desiderio Fortunato, a Coquitlam, B.C., resident who frequently crosses the border to visit his second home in the state of Washington. “Is that illegal in the United States, asking an officer to be polite?”
Mr. Fortunato said after he was sprayed he was forcefully taken into custody by several officers. He was held for three hours before he was released without being allowed entry into the United States. Mr. Fortunato says he was dismissed with a warning to be more cooperative in the future.
Finland’s talking trash cans
Finland has developed a series of talking trash cans to help keep their cities cleaner and make visitors more aware of carelessly tossing trash. The trash cans also have the added benefit of teaching visitors a bit of the Finnish language.
The talking trash bins greet passers-by and encourage them to throw their trash away. They are never at a loss for words, whether the subject is culture or politics. This summer tourists will be delighted to hear that the talking trash bins speak not only Finnish and Swedish, but also Japanese, English, German, Polish and Russian. Tourists can also learn the basics of the Finnish language, such as: “One of the sure signs of summer in Finland is that the trash bins start talking.”
Hawaiian hotel uses trash to measure the pulse of the economy
Federal agents have been know to do it, identity thieves do it and, now, Hawaiian hotels do it (well, at least one) — they dig through your trash to see what you are doing. In this case, the hotel uses the trash collected as a general gauge to the level of the economy. The less expensive the wrappers found in hotel trash cans, the worse the economy. Or, the more multi-kid families staying at the establishment.
When you see a lot more Burger King, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s wrappers, it’s clear tourists are cutting corners.
Orr’s unofficial trash-can index highlights the dual challenge facing the state’s No. 1 industry: it needs to get more tourists to come and to get the ones who do visit to spend more.
While visitor arrivals in the first half of this year are down about 10 percent from a year ago, spending is off 15 percent. That translates into $900 million less flowing into the state in six months.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
