NOT A PROFESSIONAL

After nine months of traveling through Asia with a film camera, the poster had made one small request over and over: please hand search it so the film wouldn't be damaged. At airport after airport, security had done it. This time, at an Amsterdam transfer, the answer was laughter.

The poster says they approached the woman at the X-ray machine politely and asked for the camera to be checked by hand. Instead, she laughed, refused, and dropped it into the tray.

Then came the comparison. The worker said the film inside was "no different than my camera roll on my phone."

For the traveler, that was the whole problem in one sentence. It was not the same thing at all, they said later, pointing out that they had gotten through countless airports without the camera ever going through an X-ray machine. This was the last stop, and the last thing they wanted was for the film to be exposed after nine months of careful handling.

But the worker did not back off. According to the poster, she kept laughing and told them they were "not a professional."

It didn't end there. The camera was then shown to her colleagues, who also laughed, turning the request into a little public spectacle at the security line. After that, the woman tossed the camera back into the tray.

The post doesn't say what happened next to the film camera, only that it had been denied a hand search at the final airport after a long trip where that exact request had been honored everywhere else. What the poster remembered most was not just the refusal, but the way it was delivered: laughing, comparing film to a phone, and dismissing the concern with, "not a professional."