Originally Posted by
TSORon
Sadly enough there are to many posters here who with limited experience with the TSA automatically assume the absolute worst about the officers charged with ensuring the safety of the flying public.
Or, it comes from experience and/or using powers of observation while standing in the security line. Or, it comes from interactions with people claiming to work for the TSA on message boards who act immaturely. Or, it comes from news reports about TSA employees doing things like breaking the law themselves.
My personal guess is, that in most instances, it's a combination of all of the above.
Originally Posted by
TSORon
Most if not all have been exposed to this forum, the EOS blog, and occasionally to actual TSO’s on the check point 15 seconds at a time. Its easy to take a single poor interaction with someone and hold it like the security blanket of our childhoods, never letting it out of our sight, never straying very far from it. We hold it so close that we can rarely see beyond its phantom comfort.
I agree with the above statements and try not to form an opinion of others until I've had adequate exposure to believe that I've seen enough behavior to establish a baseline for the person/agency. That's why I still view and respond to posts made by certain people on this message board... some I've only seen for a week or two, and while I have started establishing opinions I still feel it's too early to brand them as immature fools.
My opinions of TSA are based upon seeing them in uh, err, "action", for years.
Originally Posted by
TSORon
You can only see them as jack-booted thugs, intent on ruining your day, taking your personal property, and delaying your transit to the sterile area.
I believe I've used the phrase "jack booted thugs" in a few threads, so I'll assume the statement may have been responding to something I said earlier. All I can say is that I call 'em as I see 'em.
When I experience rude, arrogant, near-militant TSOs who seem hell-bent on running their checkpoint like a POW camp, I think of jack-booted thugs. When I encounter people who think they have a right to demand answers to all questions they ask (whether appropriate or not), the word oppressive comes to mind.
When I encounter people who want to declare a Starbucks thermos as an item not allowed into the sterile area (just after them having made a comment about how "nice" the thermos was), I can only assume that they are trying to use their power to take something "nice" that they would like to have from me. (Yes, this has happened to me before, on two separate times, flying out of MLI. That's part of the reason why I've flown into ORD, rented a car, and made the 3 hour drive down there the last couple times I've visited friends out that way.)
Originally Posted by
TSORon
You fail to see the humans behind the uniform. The men and women who get up at 1:30am to be on the checkpoint by 3am, who endure the continuous changes of policy and procedure, who were courageous enough to accept jobs on the front line of America’s Anti-Terrorism efforts, dangerous though it may be.
TSOs sometimes fail to see the passenger behind the "perp". The men and women who get up at 4am to drive to the airport and be on an early morning flight, who endure the continuous laptop-in, laptop-out of the checkpoint and cattle-herding into small regional jets-- the people who are courageous enough to continue flying, despite all the published screw ups, mistakes, and blunders by the agency charged with keeping the flying public safe.
TSOs, in my experience, rarely understand that without us, the flying public, they would be out of jobs and standing back in the welfare line or at the unemployment office.
And the quote about being on the front line of America's Anti-Terrorism efforts is just too preposterous to even really deserve a reply. The only thing I can think of is the old G. I. Joe cartoons, and a TSO standing up in the middle of a checkpoint, magnetometer in hand and pointed to the sky like a rifle, shouting "Yo Joe!".
Originally Posted by
TSORon
They endure low pay, long and unusual hours, less than perfect working conditions, unidentified hazardous materials, the diseases and infections of those passengers they come into contact with, undeserved attitude and the occasional cussing out, and a whole host of other things that make the job less than pleasant at times.
Hmm. Sounds like just about any other person's job to me. Nobody is ever happy with their pay, everybody always thinks they have to work too much, and nobody is ever completely satisfied with their work environment. It's a government job, so I'm not sure what else one would expect. Let's put things in perspective:
- The job of a TSO does not require any real skills that can't be acquired in a day or two of on-the-job training
- The job isn't very demanding (doesn't require much physical work, and certainly doesn't require much mental exertion)
- The job doesn't require much in way of education (no college degree is really necessary, and high school drop-outs could probably even run the equipment and screen the baggage after a day or two training at most)
- It's a government job, so it won't pay much
As for the remainder of that comment, well, let's consider this:
- Many other professions come into contact with far more dangerous unidentified materials than yours. Police, fire, and military come to mind immediately. And as a volunteer in this arena, I probably have been exposed to more dangerous materials than 95% of TSOs standing at a checkpoint.
- Diseases... well, everybody gets exposed to this at work. I can't think of a single job in America where people are not exposed to sick people in some way, shape, or form. And I'll refrain from getting into other nasty details like the scabies outbreak from TSA folks at BOS. Lord only knows how many of the flying public were exposed to that.
- Undeserved attitude and cussing out... well, all I can say is that it's something you need to deal with. Every job has its unpleasantness. Perhaps if TSA was more effective, didn't at least create the perception that so much taxpayer money was being wasted, didn't hold people up in line so much, didn't try to secretly strip search people via machines, and wasn't rude/condescending/know-it-all in the first place, they wouldn't get as much attitude back. From the way your remark is phrased, though, I infer that you don't think TSA has played a significant role in creating and propagating this problem.
Originally Posted by
TSORon
On the other hand, we get to deal with the people. 98% of them are really nice to work with.
...Snip...
Fun with the passengers, fun with the kids, and still get them through to their aircraft with a minimum of fuss.
TSORon, that's a nice piece of touchy-feely stuff you wrote. It sits in stark contrast with many of your other postings in many other threads, and does a nice job of trying to paint TSOs as people too.
But somehow I just can't reconcile the mental picture of TSOs joking with little children and welcoming people through the WMTD with smiles on their faces with the TSA I see on a weekly basis. It just seems too... 'plastic-like'... to be real.
Are you sure you're not trying out for a new blogger position at Propaganda Village? Or I guess you could possibly be Blogdad Bob himself, posting on here in disguise...
Originally Posted by
TSORon
So much of the posting here is complaints. Sure, I didn’t start here in the best of ways, but then again this conversation has been going on a very long time, and I have been here only a few weeks. You people have been screaming your complaints for a few years now, and yet you continue to do so to this day. I get the feeling its no longer about improving the situation, but about the complaining. Some of you just don’t realize that, your having to much fun complaining.
There are very good reasons why most of the posting here is complaints. TSA is not doing a good job at fulfilling its mission, if its mission is indeed keeping our skies safe. TSA is not customer-friendly, held accountable for its mistakes, or wisely spending taxpayer dollars. And nobody there seems to be interested in making the necessary improvements to make it an effective organization. What you see here is the manifestation of a lot of pent-up anger and frustration because of this. There is a reason why "TSA" has come to mean things like "Thousands Standing Around" and "Totally Stupid *ssholes" to the frequently flying public; what you are experiencing here is this anger and frustration in a somewhat more concentrated form due to the frequent traveller status of many of this board's posters.
I can't speak for everybody, but a lot of my frustration is because of the above. But I'll also be one of the first to admit that a tiny part of it is because it is somewhat fun to make fun of the TSA too. Let's face it: they do such a bad job at their primary function that they are a pretty easy target.