Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
Three points in reply:
1. The way it works is not necessarily the way it has to work in the future. We can always work to make it better.
2. I don't know what "the will of the people" is -- either on health care, or on TSA procedures. (Let's drop the health care example, so that we don't get dragged down into OMNI.) TSA claims that 95% of passengers approve of their procedures ... with little or no documentation as to how that number is justified. On the other side, postings on public blogs, forums like FT, and newspaper articles seem overwhelmingly against the TSA and its procedures ... with no indication as to whether or not those negative posters are simply the same folks posting over and over again. No-one, on either side of the issue, has convinced me convincingly what "the will of the people" is on TSA --- and so each side claims that "the will of the people" is with them.
3. "The will of the people" is, at times, irrelevant. If the will of the people is unjust or immoral, then it deserves to be ignored. The question should not be "do most people agree with this?". The question should be "is it right?"
OUCH! Well said Jim. ^
Given the percentage of people who actually exercise their right to vote now days, its kind of difficult to determine "what" the will of the people is.
I cant speak for other airports, but at mine the supervisors keep track of the number of compliments and complaints they receive each shift. Verbal and written. And they pass this information along to the TSA Customer Support Manager, who is responsible for tracking the data and reporting it to HQ. I get to see this data on occasion, and must say that the 95% you quote is quite low, at least for my airport. 99% would be closer. Now, of course that is not an indication of how people think about TSA in general, but it is a great indicator on how well the TSO's I work with treat the passengers.
Most people seem to know that this is a thankless job, and they take the time to thank us anyway. We get the occasional complaint, and in most cases its about the process and not the individual TSO's. Even those are rare.