Boggie Dog

I have little regard for TSA employees but I never would call one a bad name or take any other direct action against one.

You have lots of job options. Adult teacher, BOP has several at each prison. A degree in anything can give you a leg up in many fields. Car sales for instance. Would you have to bust your butt? You betcha but at least you would have respect for yourself. Think outside of the box a bit.

And be aware, TSA reads this blog.

Anon1934

I'll keep that in mind. However, what I've posted here has been solely my opinions and non-SSI material. If I get busted for that, they're gonna have more problems on their hands than just a pissed off TSO.

MKEbound

Based on those answers I will wish you lots of luck and some encouragement. My younger sister has a degree in English and has landed her dream job doing research for a small but nice company in Seattle.

Willytx

You may want to pick up a dosimeter or film badge like X-Ray techs and dentist office folks wear. Since your employer says "Remain calm, all is well" when it comes to radiation exposure, its up to you to protect yourself. I would not recommend working around the WBI/AIT without one when your airport gets those. It may be a forbidden device for showing independent thought, so you may have to hide or disguise it.

There is a resident X-Ray tech here, he may be able to direct you where to find one. Many people here would appreciate a truthful answer on exposure.

Welcome!

exbayern

Sadly I think that a lot of us see that in our frequent travels although it is disguised as 'planned inconsistency'. We even see that in the responses here on this website.

FriendlySkies

+1

I would be very interested to see how much radiation those awful machines give out..

OP, Welcome to FT! I'm glad that we have a TSO that doesn't try to dodge our questions!

My question is: Do you think TSA will ever release some sort of document detailing what pax are required to do? This would really help with power-tripping TSOs!

Boggie Dog

I know you said you don't like kids but DOD hires teachers to teach in DOD schools at bases overseas. Chance to travel and see the world.

Anon1934

Thanks. Like I said, I'm just another Joe trying to get by making a buck. I don't consider myself to be holier than thou because I wear a cheap metal badge. As stated earlier, I appreciate wholeheartedly those of you who understand where I'm coming from (I see you all daily at my airport). I just want to give back in a way where I won't be burned at the stake by management.

To answer your question; it baffles me that we haven't done this. We take one TSO off the lane per rotation to stand in the middle of the security lane and tell PAX what to do, but the majority realize that most passengers simply don't listen, so they give up and just stand there. I'm going to do my best to help you out right now, even with the basics (though I know you already know them).

1) Have your boarding pass and Government Issued ID ready. Passport Cards and NEXUS ID are Govn't issued IDs. Challenge any TSO who claims they are not. Here's a quote from the Customs and Border Protection website: "Under the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, the NEXUS card has been approved as an alternative to the passport for air, land, and sea travel into the United States for US and Canadian citizens." http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/tr...prog/nexus.xml
2) Take off your shoes. They don't need a bin, you can run them on the belt solo.
3) Take your 1qt sized bag of liquids out of the bag and put it in a bowl or your bin/s. Finish your coffee/bottled water/soda before you go through. Or you can throw it out. You CAN take an empty bottle through with you, but it's gotta go through the xray (I know, it's dumb).
4) If you have a laptop, take it out of your bag and put it into a bin by itself. By itself is just what it sounds like. Nothing on top of the laptop, nothing underneath. If your laptop is in one of those sleeve things with ONLY the laptop, leave it in your sleeve. If you have a laptop case that opens up into two compartments, you can leave it in as long as NOTHING is on top of the laptop or in the laptop compartment. Seriously, nothing. I've seen TSOs scream at people for having headphone cables on the laptop case.
5) Take out your cell phone, keys, coins, bubblegum wrappers, cigarette packs. I often get "My belt buckle didn't alarm in [random airport]." I don't know what to tell ya, i'm sorry. If it's alarming and you swear up and down that there's nothing else metal on your person, I guess it's gotta be the belt. "You changed the sensitivity on this thing," is common too. I have no idea how to change that figure on the machine. All I know how to do is watch it alarm and get the passenger throughput numbers off of it.

After that, you should be good to go. I hope that helped.

Thanks for the tip ^ I'll look into that. I've been to Europe once before and have been dying to get back there.

Boggie Dog

http://www.dodea.edu/home/

red456

Many of us have been saying that for a long, long time.

However, there have been literally hundreds of reports of people not taking their Kippie bags out of the carry-on and nary is word is said about it.

Speaking of carry-ons, why are shoes on feet dangerous but shoes in carry-on bags are not dangerous. TSA at PV keeps touting all the things that have been found on shoes forced off of peoples feet, yet, miracle of miracles, apparently no dangerous things are found in shoes packed in carry-ons.

Thanks for coming here. Your attitude is fantastic - so much better than what we are accustomed to reading here.

Just be careful as there have been reports of screeners who had problems after posting here.

goalie

welcome to flyertalk Anon1934 and thank you for your offer ^ but if i may....

don't take things said here personally as is it's not the employees that most of us do not like per se but rather your employer as the tsa (corporate) is so out of control and operationally inept that they have no clue as to what goes on in the real world (aka the checkpoints)

watch your six! even with "an in" as you described, be very very cautious about what you post as big brother does read f/t

Anon1934

^ to "Kippie bags," that got a laugh out of me. I've seen the same at my airport first hand. In my personal opinion, when a TSO has had enough experience, it's easy to tell that a bottle of liquid is 3.4 ounces or less. Therefore, many simply see it and say "Yea, that's less than 3.4" and let it roll. However, managements have been cracking down on this and TSOs are getting written up left and right for resolving these issues without doing a bag check. Therefore, nowadays, TSOs have been calling for bag checks on liquid bags to avoid harassment/discipline by superiors.

Your concern about shoes on feet vs shoes in bags is an interesting one. If you're hiding something in your shoes in your carry-on bag, there's a good chance it'll be spotted by the Xray op. If you're walking through the metal detector with a pair that doesn't have metal shanks but contains an non-metallic prohib, then how would we spot it? Does that make sense? Please let me know if that needs clarification, I wasn't too sure on what you meant to begin with. Sorry.

InkUnderNails

BD, we get one good infiltrator and you are here encouraging a defection.

Okay, enough for my selfish wants.

Anon, go for it and good luck. With your attitude you will do well about anywhere.

red456

You got it right - thanks. I find it difficult to believe, however, that something cannot be "artfully concealed" in a shoe in the carry-on.

For my next questions: How much "SSI" is really "SSI" and not just something screeners are told in order to make them feel important and like they really are keeping the skies safe from terrorists. It's my belief that if you lead someone to believe that so much of what they do is "SSI" it only leads to a lot of the power-tripping that we see from screeners. (Sorry, I just cannot call you "officers".)

Do you believe that you are doing anything really worthwhile?

PTravel

I want to echo that, but also want to acknowledge the other "good guys" from TSA who post here -- we actually have quite a few, and only a couple of bad apples that I can think of.

I'll echo that as well. We've heard reports of TSOs who have been harassed, and even fired, for posting in public forums.

Anon1984, I have a question:

We've had sporadic reports of TSOs conducting ID checks and pat-downs at gate waiting areas, i.e. not in connection with clearing security at the primary checkpoint OR as part of the gate-screening process, but randomly throughout the sterile side of the terminal. In my personal opinion, for what that's worth, such searches are clearly unconstitutional. Has TSO ordered these so-called "random" searches, or is this a case of TSOs exceeding their authority?