I'll keep this short.

I had my first "experience" with TSA. About a week ago I was on a flight for ZRH out of BOS. I was a few minutes late and the Swiss counter was disorganised (I think they were training new employees). Anyways, I get to security and ask if I should take off the knee brace and put it through the XRAY machine and go through the metal detector. There was nobody in line (it was empty, probably as Swiss was the last flight out).

I was told "no...keep it on". *shrug* Whatever.

The metal detector beeps. The TSA guy goes "I wonder what that could be." I asked him, "Could I remove it and put it through XRAY then go through the metal detector again?" "No, sorry. [name yelled] detector went off. Go over there, he's going to search you," was the reply.

I was saying in my mind you can't ....ing be serious. It takes him about 15 minutes to do a complete search, the only place where the wands were going off was around the knee brace. What a surprise. And yet they never had me remove it and put it through XRAY, after I was scanned 6 times palms up and down, they let me go and collect myself.

I was at the point of doing what the countless before me have wanted to say but were afraid for various reasons. I thought about it on the plane as to why I didn't speak my mind and it came down to, there was NOBODY around. So I'd miss my flight, maybe get arrested for no value since no one would hear me complaining -regardless how loud I became.

To finish the wonderful experience, the idiot patting me down was not careful around my knee. He kept pressing hard into the affected areas, and I told him "Can you be more careful" which he always responded to "Sure." Nothing changed. It was 15 minutes of a completely useless, stupid search. And in my opinion, completely unnecessary. And to top it off, the wand only beeped when around my knee brace and they didn't even ....ing XRAY it.