I thought you all might be amused by something that happened to me the other day. I was flying out of SJC. When I went through TSA pre-check, they spent some time looking at the screen and then told me they needed to look through my briefcase. After the gentleman checked my bag and returned it to me, he told me it was flagged because I had a lot of snacks.

I was a little taken aback by that. I didn’t know that was a suspicious thing. It is true that when I fly, if I am given a package of pretzels or cookies or what have you, I often toss it into my briefcase so there were several flights worth of those. I sometimes toss in a packet or two of instant oatmeal, too, and they were in there. My hotel had given me a granola bar. I also had an apple in there. Admittedly, it had been a while since I had cleaned out the snacks so this was both embarrassing and humorous.

It gets better. I raced to the gate to see if I could get on an earlier flight and the gate agent could not have been nicer. The doors to the gate were already closed But he phoned the plane and they were going to let me on. I reached for my phone to text my ride to pick me up earlier, and it was nowhere to be found. I realized I left the phone at the check in counter downstairs, where I had stopped to ask about the possibility of getting on the earlier flight.