The first time I went through the facial recognition it had issues recognising me and I had to queue for 10-15 minutes, but when I went through 2 years later (having been in a motorcycle accident 24 hours earlier with a smashed up face, beard and not having showered in 36 hours) it worked flawlessly.
I always have to speak to a customs agent when traveling to Australia. My passport and all alternate photo ids are pre-big-bushy-beard, which throws the facial recognition kiosks for a loop. I made the mistake of trying to joke about it to the customs agent one time, and I remember her raising her eyebrows at me and calling over a supervisor.
The grandparent's comment is pretty descriptive of my experience at the Australian border.
> At the airport we treat all arriving passengers as criminals
The closest I've come to not being treated like a criminal are borders in SEA where the agents only spoke a few words of English so they may have looked at me like I was a criminal but couldn't really say it in a way I would understand.