Originally Posted by pmocek

Nice work, Polonius.

I once had one of the private security contractors who are still in use at Kansas City International turn over his badge to prevent me from reading it after a frustrating encounter in which he proclaimed laws that didn't exist, I got confirmation of my understanding of things at the airline ticket counter, and he watched me walk through the checkpoint even though he thought I shouldn't be allowed.

A few months ago, a TSA ID-and-boarding-pass-checker at Sea-Tac become aggressive and threatened to send me to the back of the line after I politely asked why some people were allowed to cut to the front of the line that about 60 of us were waiting in, then politely responded to his suggestion that I take it up with the airlines by expressing my belief that when people pay more to airlines for their tickets, it's reasonable for the airline to provide them with a higher level of service, but it's not reasonable for our federal government -- who created and managed the line we were standing in and who created the checkpoint we were waiting to traverse -- to give special service like skipping the line to those people. He didn't have anything to say about whether people should be relegated to the slow line to take care of something their government requires them to do because they didn't pay extra. He did say that I was making him nervous (which I recognized as police lingo for "You're doing something I don't like. Stop or else I'll say that you were threatening me and stop you whether I have the authority to do you or not.") and that if I said anything else he would send me to the back of the line.

It seems that in my cases and in Polonius', it would have been good to have captured the incidents on video tape. Polonius, have you considered recording these encounters?