Originally Posted by Carl Johnson

And what you are discussing here is not the worst of it, I don't think. As I understand it, the clerk deliberately moved even slower than usual and was even more inefficient than usual in examining your belongings. Clerks do this all the time; they resent any questioning of what they are doing and they resent it when anybody points out that they are not following the rules.

The problem is that they are taught to project a "command presence" and that they are on some kind of "front line" against threats to aviation security, and that they are never fired for any offense against a passenger other than stealing an ipad from a TV network.

If the clerks would all just follow the rules properly so we didn't have to argue with them all the time, wouldn't things be very much closer to normal screening? Instead, they don't learn or follow the rules, and they retaliate against passengers who want them to follow the rules. Phil Mocek, Stacey Armato, Sai, and (in a very minor minor way) me. I had clerks argue with me back before they FINALLY learned what a NEXUS card is, and one clerk was going to let me pass but then got a supervisor when I asked him why did he not know the rules. So that was a minor, but deliberate act of retaliation.

The problem with them not responding to questions is that it keeps them from doing the jobs properly. I went to Paris from T1 at JFK, which is all international flights I think. I presented my driver's license, and the document checker kept asking me for my passport and I kept asking why and she kept saying I need to see your passport. Finally she called a supervisor, who called somebody on the radio, and then after speaking with this person, did the required scribbling and put me on through.

It is NOT the rule that you have to show your passport, and the clerks should ACTUALLY ANSWER a passenger who asks they why they are making a request that does not comply with the rules. At that point my passport only showed stamps for Malaysia, Singapore, Amsterdam, and Paris, and I didn't actually care, but lots of flyertalkers have said they don't want clerks looking through their passports in the belief that they're Junior Detectives. And some less knowledgeable travelers also don't want that, but don't know that the clerk doesn't have any right to ask for a specific ID.