I flew Delta for the first time in a long time today.

Flew at 6am to SLC without too much ado.

I left SLC tonight to go to LAS, and was unpleasantly screwed by Delta and the TSA.

Having zero status on Delta, I didn't expect much. As I checked in at 4pm for a 5:50pm flight, I found out I had a middle seat in row 10, on a Boeing 737. No big deal, I thought. It's only an hour and half flight.

Well, Delta had pre-selected me to be screened, and had coded my boarding pass with "selpx" for secondary screening.

Delta boards 1st class, elites, then the cattle class from the back to the front.

As I patiently waited to be among the last group of passengers to board, I was told to go to secondary screening. As it turned out, I was the very last passenger screened because of my seat assignment in row 10.

The screening was not particularly pleasant, but I grinned and beared it. After an extraordinarily long screening time, during which a TSA lady took over a minute to examine my office badge (for what reason I have no idea), I went to go board with my luggage and backpack in disarray.

The flight was completely full, and I was told to give up my small rolling luggage to be checked in. This in itself was annoying, but it got worse.

As I went to sit in row 10, I discovered to my horror that it was the cattle class bulk head seat. For some strange reason, 1st class has rows 1 & 2, then cattle class starts with row 10. So rows 3-9 don't exist on Delta's 737's.

To top it off, all of the folks who had boarded prior to me had thrown their luggage in the front of the plane, so I had to leave my backpack way in the back of the plane, under no supervision. I was particularly unhappy about that situation, and cursed Delta for their deceitful seating arrangements.

I kept wondering why Delta & the TSA don't have better customer service:

1) if they knew who they were going to pull, why make me wait to be the last group to board? Just call me before boarding, and then rifle thru my luggage, just like Southwest does. That way I don't get stuck with no luggage space and have to leave my bag way in the back away from me.

2) why does Delta have such a stupid seating arrangement? What's wrong with having rows 3-9? Very annoying and misleading.

3) The TSA who rifled thru my possessions were very thorough, and handled my toiletries without gloves. I was in no mood to argue, as I was dead tired and wanted to board. However, enough is enough, this stupid invasion of privacy on innocent people has to stop. I'm not willing to give up my privacy rights in the name of pretending to give security to the travelling public. This secondary searching is just plain tiring, invasive, and ultimately ineffective.

I am so tired of being tired of harrassed and inconvenienced. It's getting really old...

I pray to God that this current insanity is just a phase, and not a progression towards more limited individual liberties and freedoms.