Los Angeles Air Force Base (LAAFB) — Attraction in El Segundo

The folks at the Visitor Control Center (VCC) are some of the most unhelpful people. Additionally, it was impossible to reach the pass/ID office by phone.

If you had this experience and are reading this please give it a like. Hopefully we can gain some traction and get this process fixed.

Here's what Happened:

I recently transitioned from Active Duty to the Reserves and was here to get a new Common Access Card (CAC). I was allowed to keep my old CAC when I outprocessed, however it was no longer in the system. The gate guard informed me of this and directed me to get a day pass at the VCC.

I received a note from the guards and they informed me that the VCC rep would issue me a pass so I could proceed onto base for my RAPIDS ID card appointment. At the VCC, the rep informed me that the note from the guard shack alone would not be enough for him issue me a pass. He said I would need to call the pass/ID office to get verification.

I informed him that the pass/ID office is difficult to reach by phone. He told me to call over and over again until I got through. Not wanting to be abrasive, I obliged. I called the office numerous times each time going through the phone tree.

I informed him that they were not picking up. He said there is nothing he could do to help and shrugged. I'm not sure why he could not give the pass/ID office a call to confirm himself, as I am sure there are many others, contractors especially, that would find themselves in this exact situation. Either way he handled this poorly. The rep was clear that he could not be bothered with the clearly dysfunctional process.

I'm writing this to document the broken process in hopes someone in a position to remedy this problem sees it and takes...

Most unhelpful visitor's office. They are very unhelpful and make everything difficult yet they act like they are the coolest people there and without them you can not do anything.

If you go there thinking that the team is going to assist you (the very same way you are used to resolving things for the sake of deconflict to truly assist your own customer yourself) to ensure that you are going to be taken care of, then you are going to find that customer service is their least of their concerns, what drives their attitude, is job security, they know they won't be fired, they deserve to be in the hall of shame because to begin with, for almost everyone it takes a very long time to arrive to the location then you are thinking the most positive way that they will honor "your military excruciating experience under your belt" just to find out that they have no consideration, no sense of deconflicting what prevents you to get you going.

If you need a fix of disappointment or a fix of frustration, these guys will make sure you get that and nothing else, all that with an smiling face of the typical people that doesn't care about what makes sense or not. Shame that the Command doesn't get involved in this bad mindset that is the facade of the base.

The one star is already too much.

ATFP grounds don't justify being turned away within US soil, get yourself cleared, get yourself honored, welcomed, taken cared of. Many of us have been deconflicters in different countries and still comply and exceed ATFP standards and still treat our own humans with dignity...

First visit to base with my spouse. I was impressed by the professionalism and organization. Commissary was clean and lovely. Gate staff and visitor's center were welcoming, patient, and kind. (This was our first visit and we needed help sorting things out.)

PX experience was humiliating. Staff person at self checkout ridiculed me as the spouse of a service person by yelling: "I don't need to see your ID, you're just here for the ride, honey." She shouted this laughing like it was her best standup material three times. It seems like she's forgotten that my tax dollars, along with millions of other Americans, support her job making fun of people just trying to survive. What a jerk. I was buying nail clippers for my mom and had to run into THAT.

While I'm sure my spouse will continue to visit (and my paltry non-tax dollars will be no big loss to the base), I wish that person could have been kinder. Her "joke" was petty. I hope this feedback gets back to her so she doesn't hurt someone else who was not there for it and was polite to her even when...