Debbie William

Review of United States Capitol

I took my family here for the first time and was s...

I took my family here for the first time and was so excited to finally get to see it. What ticked me off the most is that AMERICANS have to go through writing their congressman and plan way ahead of time just to get tickets to the House of Rep and Senate. Yet TOURING INTERNATIONALS just walk up to the desk, show their passports and get 6 of them for their family immediately while an America family of 4 was told they could not go in and needed to write their congressman. What the heck!! WHOSE country is this anyway??? It's OUR tax dollars, OUR capitol and OUR country. It means more to an American to go inside their Capitol than it does to tourists. Something is VERY wrong here. It's true, the capitol has very stiff security, has ugly scaffolding around it (not good for pics this summer) and you have to throw all food and drinks away at the guard's checkpoint. Also, every guard, food service worker and tourist center worker we encountered for the entire week at the Captiol and around town were really rude African Americans that acted like they could care less about their jobs and had zero customer service skills.. No, I'm not racists and am in a bi-racial marriage. It was just way TOO obvious while in DC that they are being catered to with jobs with low expectations of their serivce. Such bad attitudes from them if you ask the slightest question, no smiles, no eye contact, no "thank you" nor "you're welcome".... not even a grunt. The capitol is awesome and my teens totally loved it, but dealing with who they've hired at the Capitol and the many other visitor centers around DC is not!