Canadians have a reputation for being nice.

But this week, a British Columbia man learned that niceness may not extend across the U.S. border — or at least not across the border crossing.

When B.C. resident Desiderio Fortunato pulled up to the U.S. customs booth to enter Blaine, Washington, and the customs officer told him to turn off his engine, Fornunato asked the officer to say “please.”

For asking the officer to play nice, however, Forunato received a face full of pepper spray.

According to the National Post:

A Canadian who demanded courtesy from a U.S. border security guard says he was pepper sprayed and held in custody for three hours for asking the disrespectful officer to “say please” when ordering him to turn his car off during a search.

“I refused to turn off the car until he said please. He didn’t. And he has the gun, I guess, so he sprayed me,” said Desiderio Fortunato, a Coquitlam, B.C., resident who frequently crosses the border to visit his second home in the state of Washington.

Fornunato wondered, “Is that illegal in the United States, asking an officer to be polite?”

Photo by Roland (flickr)