I flew out of terminal 2 in PHX on Tuesday while wearing a small cast on my thumb/wrist. I wasn't sure what to expect and forgot to look at the tsa's website before I left. I thought that the metal clasps holding the bandage over the cast might set of the WTMD but they didn't. Other than the tsa being painfully slow in terminal 2, nothing else happened.
Coming home on Wednesday from SMF, as I walk through the WTMD, the tsa guy says something to the effect of "extra screening". I honestly thought he was anticipating the WTMD alarming and as it didn't, I said "nope, not today." He said "no really, you have to wait here because of the cast." While waiting I started to give him a little bit of a hard time by saying "I didn't get extra screening in PHX, how do I know you are right and they are wrong?" He replied "we are the TSA here." I said "you know, PHX is in America and it's the TSA there, too."
"Male assist! Better get a supervisor over here too", was his response. I guess I was scaring him. As this whole thing caught me by surprise, I suddenly realized that while I could see my bags coming out of the x-ray, because of the angle, I could not see into the bins and couldn't tell which bin had my laptop in it. I had to pretty much yell over to the x-ray screener area and tell them I couldn't see my laptop and that I wanted it placed where other passengers couldn't get to it. Finally a screener and manager came over and I asked to see the policy on casts. I got the usual B.S. line about it being super secret SOP. I told them that I'm sure it's on the public website and could they show it to me. Of course they couldn't. They said that they just needed to swab the cast and that I needed to sit down. I said "if you just need to swab, then go ahead but I don't need to sit down for that." While swabbing, I asked the manager, "assuming that PHX was wrong and that you are right, how safe should I feel that I was able to board an aircraft without my cast being swabbed in PHX?"
"We are here for your safety," came the reply.
"Not doing a very good job if I can get on a plane without the TSA doing what it's supposed to do. Also, while I'm thinking about it, you are separating passengers from their personal items and I couldn't see my laptop."
The manager says "I can see in the bins from here and I'm shorter than you."
"No, not here. Where I was waiting before the swabbing."
"Well there's a number you can call to complain."
"I'm complaining now and you're the manager so how about you do something about it?"
"Ok, I will."
So what did I learn from this that I didn't already know? First, SMF was right, they are supposed to swab the cast. PHX couldn't have just missed it as I was wearing a t-shirt. Had the tsa guy at the WTMD in SMF said "we just need to swab the cast" I would have felt totally different about the whole situation. The "you are going to get extra screening" with a smirk on his face just reinforced the belief about tsa and power-trips.
Secondly, SMF screeners and managers (at least the one I dealt with) are clueless. They had no idea how to deal with me pointing out that my possessions could not be seen from the secondary area nor did they realize that the error in PHX exposed the tsa for the farce that it is.
The good thing is that I now know to make sure that my cast made out of Semtex needs to be kept under my long sleeve shirt where it can't be seen.