Originally Posted by FlyingHoustonian

I agree with Ari. I am vexed by this action you took.

I am someone who finds the feckless incompetence of the TSA beyond compare but I normally do not "take the first shot" when it comes to checkpoint experiences, nor do I find the need to act foolish and uneducated in public useful. You actually got a TSA clerk who offered to help you with your bags, something many of us punish the TSA for not normally doing, and you acted small and provencial. Also, like it or not a TSA pay band E clerk makes more than $10 an hour (The "whether they should" debate is for a different thread).

Had the clerk been rude, flippant, or otherwise a "jerk" I might understand responding in kind but from your story it seems you had the best possible experiance given the unfortunate TSA circumstances we are dealt today.

What you did solved nothing reolicy, other than possible taking one of the few courteous TSA clerks and making them possibly hate the next pax a little more (granted that is something they shouldn't do but we all know the history of the TSA).

Originally Posted by RoadVeteran

Then I am equally guilty of being a jerk and I admit it and although I may have toned down the way I act towards a clerk who was courteous like this one, I smile at the thought of being able to do anything LEGALLY possible to make the clerks working life as miserable as inhumanly possible^ and if that carries over into their nonworking life, then so be it^, they are the ones that made the choice to work for an organization that is hated and despised by travelers from all over the world, they are the ones that choose to stay and enforce TSA upper managements orders to grope and molest people at the checkpoint, to force or coerce people into the radiation porno machines or submit to being sexually assualted as the only alternative to not flying

"trying to get on their nerves" you say?, ABSOLUTLEY^

"testing their professionalism"? then its a very short test in most cases

If this disgusts you, I make no apolgies, I have not read every post in this thread yet, but I am betting that the majority are in agreement with the OP.