Originally Posted by sky74

Sitting at my hotel in Amman ruminating on the latest TSA absurdity I've encountered. Flying out O'Hare-Amman T5 and was subjected to secondary screening, which is par for the course to this region of the world and basically consists of someone rummaging through your carry-ons and groping you.

When I approached the woman to give her my bags, I attempted to place my phone inside the bag for her inspection. "Jump back – don’t you touch nothin’!" she screamed. "You get yo'self over there and out of my way. This ain't hard. Put ‘yo bags on the table. NOW. I SAID, PUT ‘YO BAGS ON THE TABLE!" I was floored - it was shocking in that her belligerence came out of nowhere. I have a broken and separated shoulder, so I was lifting slowly. Even considering the injury, I was moving a very reasonable pace. I froze for a moment because I was so shocked, beginning to be upset, when her male colleague rushed in with "This is secondary security screening! We made several announcements and there are signs everywhere. If you didn't hear us, then you should be at the gate earlier!"

Huh?! Totally non-sequitur tantrum there fella - no one's freaking out about secondary screening. Rather, someone's standing there shocked into silence first by your insane colleague and now by you.

Sad to say, I'm afraid this man seemed to be a supervisor of sorts - though I use the term with the greatest irony. As an aside, I was at the gate precisely at 8:30pm, which is exactly when the ticket agent told me to be there.

As another woman patted me down, I asked her to be very careful of my shoulder, which she wasn't, causing me to flinch. At this the black woman started screaming again about how "it ain't hard!" She and her colleague were laughing and making fun of me and several other passengers, who were also struggling with the belligerence and general pandemonium at the gate.

Several Jordanians behind me were laughing and said "If this is 'security' here in America, you are right to be afraid all the time."

Sadly, I completely agree with my fellow passengers. It was a truly spectacular display of incompetence, belligerence and unprofessionalism.

Oh, and did I mention that my suitcase is still in Chicago? Held up by "security screening." Because evidently a 3-hour layover is just too tight for the TSA to deal with.

God bless TSA and the DHS. Without them, other countries would have less to laugh at us about. Sigh.