I don't travel very often at all, but even on my few travels I have found the European security theater more respectful than the TSA. I might be lucky, but I have never had a TSO yell or be rude to me. The big difference to me personally is the way searches of my baggage is handled.

I carry a lot of camera equipment and my bags to get cluttered due to the need to fit a lot of stuff into my camera bag. So I know that I often get picked to have my bags searched at the checkpoint. This search is where I see the most difference between the US and Europe.

US: Watch as the TSO takes off with your bags as you try to put on your shoes. (I almost think that they make us take of our shoes so that we cannot catch them, I have also learned to put my most likely bag to trigger screening on the belt last). Watch as the TSO opens compartments (if you know where they went with your bag), digs through your bags, picks up expensive equipment and then almost drops it, banging equipment against each other, try to shove everything back into the bag while scratching and denting it, giving you "respect my authority" looks when you tell them "this bag and everything in it costs $5,000 so please be a little bit more careful with it".

Europe: When my bag triggers screening their security stands next to it and attempts to locate the owner. After they find me they ask me to carry it to the secondary screening table. They ask me to open the compartments. They ask me to remove equipment. They ask me to manipulate the equipment (please take the lens off the camera, please take the cap of this, please open this container). They ask me questions about some of my equipment (most often "Why is there a countdown timer attached to these metal pipes?"). They are very direct and straightforwards with their requests/commands, but I have never encoundered what I would consider rude. And I can also honestly say that I don't think I ever had a European lay a finger on any of my equipment.