Originally Posted by Bart

There are different types of posts about TSA:

1. Just because something was done at one airport that it's official TSA policy throughout the United States. Unfortunately, there are local policies that either deviate from TSA SOP or are a very tight interpretation of TSA SOP. You folks are the ones who travel a lot and should be able to tell the difference between airports. Yet the comments made in here are typically slanted to argue that this must be some nationwide policy.

2. Comments about "papers please" and "jackbooted thugs." This is ridiculous. Many screeners are military veterans or former law enforcement officers who have, at one point or another, truly laid it on the line. To question our dedication to this nation in such a manner and call it "dialogue" is insulting.

3. Comments about TSOs being McDonald's rejects or unable to qualify for anything higher than minimum wage jobs. Another dumb trend that I often see in here. And this coming from people who supposedly have a professional background? Are we a caste society? Do you people have no concept of honor, service and dedication?

4. One experience with a rude screener means that all screeners are rude. There are rude screeners, unfortunately. Rather than whine and complain about them online, why not submit a written complaint so we can clean up our ranks? Documentation is needed for supervisors to take action. However, my point here is that the rude screeners don't represent the majority of us. Even when someone points out a positive experience with a screener who acted professionally, the responses are that this must be the one good apple in a barrel of bad ones or that the poster must have come across a screener who was having a "bad day" and would probably be rude on any other day.

5. Retaliatory screening "policy." There is no retaliatory screening policy. If a screener advises you to remove your shoes and you do not, then that screener is obligated to refer you to secondary screening. I will concede the point that there are still a lot of screeners who either don't understand the shoe screening criteria or are taking the lazy way out by having all shoes removed. This is not retaliation but laziness. Intentions are good but execution is poor. People like me are trying to correct that.

I don't dispute the negative experiences. There will always be negative encounters. I dispute the hyperbole and empty-headed rhetoric that accompanies those experiences that attempt to apply it to all of us, especially those of us who are trying to live up to the published standards of TSA.

I do treat everyone with dignity and respect, even when they're first class passengers who are yelling in my face. (As an airline flight attendant once posted in here, "there are first class passengers and then there are passengers in first class.")