Originally Posted by
gsoltso
Except you completely ignored the statement you highlighted. I stated that if a TSO is professional and courteous - it becomes about policy or personal issues on the passengers part, not the TSO in front of them. One snippet of video does not encompass the entire event that happened. I will not excuse the attitude or behavior by the individual in this video, I have no problem saying that this should have been handled differently. I have done so in the past - your willful omission of that says volumes. I openly agree that we have some employees that exhibit a lack of professionalism (at least some of the time, based upon the videos I have seen). Painting our entire workforce with that same brush is a shallow abuse of words, and shows an unwillingness to see other things that are there. Power-trippers, thieves and unprofessional TSOs are not acceptable, and never will be - if you see it, please file complaints, or link them to me here, I will send them to the customer service folks. These types of videos, I will welcome the chance to forward those to the customer service folk at HQ.
I see TSA screeners on a different level than you do. We are on opposite sides of the fence and our views will be based on which side we are viewing the event from. There have been way too many unprofessional TSA screeners I have run across in my travels. Are they the norm? I certainly hope not but they are far more likely to leave a lasting impression than the guy/gal quietly doing their job the right way. I purposely pulled an example of about as far from professional that I could find with the point being that this guy has advanced from a day one screener to a STSO who trains and leads others. TSA's chain of command tolerates this person and even promoted him. This wasn't a first time act for this guy, just the first time it was recorded. I'm guessing this guys command considered him a professional. You paint TSA as all top notch professionals who wouldn't say a bad word if someone stomp their foot. I don't see it that way. I know that in any distribution of people there will be good, average, and bad people. Sadly early on TSA seems to get a barrel full of the worst of the worse. It will take years to get rid of them through attrition. Also, if TSA screeners are taught that they are on the front lines of the war on terror then I think that will color how they interact with people. TSA is not even close to the front lines and their jobs aren't a high risk occupation. TSA attitude developed in new hires plays a role on how passengers will be treated as the employee grows with the organization. Bad trainers, bad employees.
You often say to file complaints. I have and nothing comes of them. I had one incident covered up by the airports FSD. Complaints used to be trashed, others just gather dust. Whatever the process is now I don't know, hopefully someone has required investigation of received complaints.
While we are doing some painting perhaps mixing our colors would be helpful!