It's been my experience that when people have negative experiences, they tend to... exaggerate. Their personal emotions invested into it, they paint it - sometimes consciously, sometimes not - in an absolutely positively worse light than it likely actually happened. If there was no exaggeration, you'd think every TSO at every checkpoint was absolutely screaming at the top of their lungs while throwing Hitler salutes and grabbing people's crotches while their cohorts made off with their cell phones, twisting their mustaches over the railroad tracks.

One could make the argument that the truth is often somewhere in the middle. It's a logical fallacy to assume that just because two people take diametrically-opposing positions on something, that the truth is always going to be dead-center of the two points of view, but, logical fallacy or not, that tends to be the way things work out most of the time. Rather something like human nature, I should think.

As far as veins bulging and such? Mm. While I personally doubt that the TSOs go off like Ren, it could very well be a frustration thing. Most of the time, the screening process is lengthened not by TSOs deciding to capriciously screw with the passengers, but by passengers actually interfering with it. Sometimes they try to 'help.' Sometimes they try to complain. Either one can stretch it out, but I can almost guarantee you that the only thing the TSO has in his mind is that he wants to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Me, I'm in no rush. I get paid by the hour, so you can take as much time as you want with anything, and I'll be cool about it.

An example:

We have to conduct routine and random screening. With respect to Jim, who states that it's practically a mathematical impossibility for a human to overcome prejudices and such to be genuinely random, I can say in good faith that I've never been anything but unpredictable in the folks that I pull over for additional screening, even when there's been no alarm.

One such gentleman that I pulled over immediately started launching into a calm tirade about constitutional rights and the 4th Amendment. He wasn't yelling, per se, but he did have a hard edge in his voice.

I stood there patiently, my hands folded in front of me, until he had finished expressing himself, and then I gave him two things - a by-the-book statement, and the implied-consent ruling of the court systems.

The by-the-book statement was something along the lines of everyone having to be screened, and that there were varying levels of screening done for different reasons, but that the end-result was to ensure that no weapons or explosives got into the sterile area. A lot of blahblahblah, mostly.

He then proceeded to ask why I pulled him over. I explained that we are required to perform continuous and relatively unpredictable screening on people at all times during screening operations.

He asked me why I pulled him, specifically, over. With a thumb over my shoulder directed at the STSO, I said, "Because you're the next one in line that came through the walk-through, and if I didn't, he [the STSO] was going to start fussing at me."

That answer apparently kind of threw him. He gave a laugh that I would only be able to call 'bitter,' then threw his arms out to the side and told me to get on with it. I told him to lower his arms because it wasn't that kind of a search, patted down the front of his torso (think, for the most part, stomach area) and then told him to have a good day as I gestured back to the x-ray lane.

Him: "That was it!?"

Me: "That's it, man."

All told, the exchange took about four minutes. Two and a half seconds of which was actually me screening him. Still, while he was speaking, I felt it was my responsibility to pay him my full and undivided attention, and to attempt to answer all of his questions to the best of my ability, which I was apparently able to do in a satisfactory manner. The ending didn't satisfy him, though. He moved off toward his stuff in a relative fury, muttering to himself.

Hm. Maybe I should have given him the works. At least then it wouldn't have been quite so anticlimactic compared to what he was expecting.

Sorry. I rambled off into Never-Never Land compared to what you had actually asked.

Still, it's just my personal viewpoint that getting angry would solve nothing. I've had to, from time to time, take on a more authoritarian voice ("Sit down, sir." as opposed to "Take a seat, man."), but those are the exceptions, rather than the general rule.

Pretty much, yep.

Ostensibly, it's to check for items hidden in hair. If a person has no hair to speak of (i.e.; a head like mine, which is to say, shaved completely) then there's really no need to wand the head at all. Otherwise, the wanding starts at the top of the head, and proceeds on to outline the body. Going down the side of the head helps to ensure that you properly screen the shoulder where it joins the neck, too.