Originally Posted by Superguy
But as we've seen, SOP can be interpreted by the FSD and made more "restrictive." It only seems to be a suggestion, not a rule. Otherwise, there'd be no excuse for designed inconsistency if everyone stuck to the SOP.
Unfortunately, it's not that simple.
Almost everything about the
screening process in the SOP is set up as a guideline. There are some hard rules in these sections, such as screeners must honor a request from a passenger if they want their film-camera to be hand-checked, and the specific pattern for hand-wanding, but the "designed inconsistency" is built from the aspect of people having differing interpretations of what the screening guidelines say. It's also why TSOs at Airport X hate TSA at Airport Y

- different interpretation, so even to them the whole thing looks absolutely foreign with only the uniforms and the general process being the same, with a lot of particulars changing based on the interpretations of the FSD or, more likely, the STSOs who train the TSOs.
Other stuff in there, like conduct or dress code, are not presented as guidelines. They are given as rules to be followed with no deviation. We're in white undershirts now because TSA worked to hammer out a vague part of the dress code that seemed to allow for black undershirts. TSA didn't want black undershirts. They wanted white undershirts, and went out of their way to re-specify that. It doesn't matter that our FSD personally thinks that the black shirts look a lot nicer with the blue shirt.
No, TSOs being courteous and polite is (supposed to be) a mandate. It's far more likely to be lax enforcement by the STSOs, rather than purposeful direction from management, that lends itself to poor and improper conduct on the part of TSOs. If the STSO won't document it, then there's very little that can actually be done about it. Kip Hawley did all he could on the matter when he sent out a directive some time ago stating that the
barking must stop (he even used the term "barking"

), but, again... if the STSOs don't document it?
I'm pretty sure that's the main reason why the Got Feedback? thing got instituted. From what I understand, it sends two copies of your complaint - one to TSA itself, the other to that airport's specific management (in essence, going over the STSO's head). If TSA looks in on it and finds that their management hasn't made any kind of investigation at all, much less taken corrective action, then they're likely to want to know why.