Before anyone suggests otherwise, I’m not complaining about the employee here at all as she was just doing her job (and very lovely), just genuinely curious as this hasn’t happened before.
I travelled, by ferry, from the UK to Ireland this morning. My husband was driving and I was in the passenger seat. Nobody in the back.
We got to the security check and were asked to pull over (this has happened before, very standard) and the female port security worker spoke in through the drivers side window, asked some standard questions, and said that she wanted to look inside the boot. No problem. My husband went to open his door to get out and she said no, their preference is for a female to do it, so asked me to step out instead.
I did. Opened the boot, chatting away to the employee, she did her check, then gave me a very brief pat-down (after telling me she would need to do so), and sent us on our way.
This is the first time we’ve ever been asked specifically to have the female in the car step out. We travel by ferry a lot (family in England) and get checked by security maybe 10% of the time, but usually my husband just gets out and is the one to open the boot, regardless of the sex of the port security worker.
He’s never been patted-down either.
I’m thinking that it makes more sense for a female port employee to deal with a female in such a scenario, from a safety perspective. I’m also wondering if it’s an opportunity they take to watch out for human trafficking- if a woman is being transported against her will, she has the opportunity to get out of the car and seek help?
Does anyone know?