US Customs and Border Patrol Revisited

Well, it's official - the customs/border patrol people at Seattle Airport suck. Or they're completely inept, though the two aren't mutually exclusive. Allow me to elaborate.

Last summer, Ethel and I were in Europe for vacation. When we came home, Seattle was our port of entry, so we had to go through immigration there. Ethel is a green card holder, I'm a US citizen. In the past, we would just get in the citizen/resident alien line. Seattle's staff told us that we couldn't do that - we had to stand in the visitors line - new policy, yada yada yada. We did, it took forever, etc. The whole sordid affair is described here.

The other day, we came back into the country through San Francisco. Surprise, they had competent, friendly people. They had a swift-moving citizens/residents line that we went through (take that Seattle assholes), and an "everyone else" line.

So, SeaTac people, what's the deal? Have there been more policy changes, or are you just a bunch of assholes who get off making the lives of others unnecessarily difficult? Or maybe you're just incompetent?