Well i was transfering from international to domestic in the atlanta airport (after that 20 hour flight from jo'burg...ugh) and they guy said i had to put my food on this 'detector' to see if my shoe had metal in it....the dedector buzzed so i had to take off my shoes...this made no sense to me because i'm 100% positive my shoe has no metal in it. I swear i think that thing buzzes for everyone, regardless if there is metal in your shoe or not.
You ever had them run through a x-ray and had that confirmed?
Just because they rang on that machine, doesn't mean it would have set off the WTMD. A lot of dress shoes have metal and those things and HHMD will pick it up no matter what, where a WTMD might pick it up but it won't be enough to set you off.
The fact is, you have the right to refuse. Washington even said this, but another fact is that airports across this country seem to want to punish people for not taking them off, even when they don't meet the profile. It's total BS and makes it that much worse for airports where the SOP is properly being followed because passengers will sometimes sit and question us in a line about why the other airport made them do it. Honestly, if any of you are one of these passengers, most the time it won't get you no where because we can't answer it truthfully because we don't work there.
what got me irritated was the TSA guy shouting out "okay, who's the next person that has to go back to high school to understand what metal is" because some people had forgotten to take change, etc out of their pockets
Even I've felt this way before as a TSA screener. My airport doesn't yell at passengers anymore and thats great, instead the WTMD people tell folks what they need to do. But we constantly have people ask us, after getting the instructions, if they need to remove change. And most the time they've put their stuff through, so they grab another bin and hold up the line even more because of it.
it was mainly the tone of his voice....everyone is stressed, there is no need for that guy to act in the condensending manor that he was..
Understand, screeners in a lot of airports are just as stressed, I can't go into detail but I know the stress level has gone up at my airport thanks to management and Washington in the last month. And when you constantly have to repeat something over and over again because passenger just refuses to take a little time and read a sign, it can get annoying.