Originally Posted by whirledtraveler
The TSA can have whatever guidelines it wants to in place, but statistically, screeners are going to go past them at times: No system behaves exactly as it was designed in policy. The closer the guidelines are to offense, the more likely going past them will be reported as a big deal. In short, there may be screeners who do get some sort of thrill out of the procedure. In any organization of thousands, I'd be surprised if there weren't.
This is serious discussion.
Complaining about a screener who fails to follow correct procedure is legitimate discussion. As you can see in this and in other threads, I've addressed these issues head-on by explaining the correct procedure and offering options passengers may exercise to ensure they are not abused by overzealous or incompetent screeners.
General comments such as "breast exam" or "groping" or "shoe carnival" are nothing more than rhetoric intended to inflame emotions and imply that TSA deliberately condones abusing the public. These type of comments have no place in a serious discussion between adults.
I know that not every airport follows the correct procedures, and I know that there are screeners among our ranks who need to be weeded out for a variety of reasons ranging from poor customer service skills to outright theft. I am also interested in seeing these people removed from our ranks. This is why my recurring theme comes back to submitting written complaints with detailed information including the screener's or supervisor's name.
We can have an overall general philosophical disagreement about airport security screening. I respect that. However, whining about these sort of generalities is no more productive than whining about taxes, weather or aging. These are realities in life; airport screening is a reality in life.
I'm eager to discuss airport security topics, but I'm not interested in the TSA-bashing, name-calling, "gub'mint conspiracy," "the terrorists have won" type of childish discussions that tend to characterize a significant number of the threads in this forum.
Fair enough?