kire

In LAX she wanted my shoes out of the bin. I explained politely that they are allowed to be in the bins according to the TSA and pointed out every other person with their shoes in the bin. I also made a comment about how useless taking the shoes off is and compared to the rest of the world. She didn't agree with me about the requirement to take the shoes off but allowed them to stay in the bin.

She also wanted my laptop bag in a separate bin. I explained and pointed out that it was an empty bag now that the laptop was out of it. I had all the cables in my in flight bag. She then agreed that it could stay in the same bin as my jacket.

It's getting so that every single piece of item you have needs to be in a separate bin. It's no wonder that when I was going through the checkpoint at DEN the queue was about 20-30 minutes long before you even got to the ID checkers.

I was firm but polite and explained that asking for permission to touch people's possessions would make for a less antagonistic experience.

For the full body scanners I self selected lines that led to WTMD machines. A few times I had a helpful TSA person point out to me that the other line was shorter. I smiled and politely declined popping over to the other queue. It was interesting watching the queues, it seemed that experienced travellers picked the longer line that led to the WTMD and inexperienced travellers went to the body scanner line.

But although the body scanner line was shorter, it actually took longer to process each individual person, so the longer WTMD line ended up with a shorter wait.

We're pretty good here in Australia, and you don't even need a boarding pass to get to the gate, so you can say goodbye to your loved ones, or meet your arriving friends. The only stupidity down here is the worldwide liquid paranoia.