FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Tide detergent sticks a no-no for carry-ons?
Old Sep 7, 2009, 6:22 pm
  #37  
RandiMOH
 
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 1
Thumbs down Tide Stick a no-no?

I have flown all over the US with Tide Sticks, always in the Zip-Lock baggie, without any problems whatsoever UNTIL this past Saturday. I was returning home to Cleveland through Fort Lauderdale airport when an overzealous TSA agent "walking the line" before I actually reached the "Puffer", saw my baggie in the bin and asked if that was my "Tide Stick". When I told her that it was, she removed it from the baggy and in a very confrontational manner told me that "Tide Sticks are NOT allowed on airplanes". I told her that not only had I brought it with me through Cleveland Hopkins airport, but that I had also passed through FLL just 6 weeks earlier, through THIS VERY CHECK POINT with the same Tide Stick, in the very same baggie, and I had never, ever had a problem with the Tide Stick in the past. She told me that I had never passed a Tide Stick throught this airport (insinuating that I was lying), and at this point she "suggested" that I take my Tide Stick back to the baggage counter and put it in my checked luggage (which I had actually checked 2 hours prior to this time, and God knows where it was at this point). I was pretty annoyed at this point and told her to simply throw it out if it was such a big problem. She then called over one of her co-workers and handed him the Tide Stick. He looked at her with a very puzzled look on his face, to which she responded "it's a Tide Stick and it's not allowed; throw it out". He then rolled his eyes, shrugged his shoulders and threw it out.

Later, as I was using the bathroom and re-applying lipstick, low and behold I found ANOTHER Tide Stick, this one in my purse (the very purse that had also passed through the scanner!). No one took THAT Tide Stick away.

So, either the rules of the TSA are pretty subjective and they really DON'T know what is and what is not allowed, or their security is pretty lax, having taken one Tide Stick away, leaving me with another one. Either way, the Nazi tactics of some of the TSA agents is appalling, leaving travelers bewildered and aggravated, not to mention losing their personal items.
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