Originally Posted by
flyinbob
This is the kind of thing we bring up and TSA posters like Bart don't seem to get. Yes, agreed, you shouldn't yell or act out. But what is wrong with the TSA agent coming to him and saying "sir, please lower your voice a bit. Now, HOW CAN I HELP YOU?" I wonder sometimes if those words exist anywhere in TSA training. Too frequently we have all seen them immediately default to the "I'll have you arrested" nonsense. TSA should prohibit all but senior supervisors from using certain words and phrases, like arrest.
Fair question. And I'm faced with my own challenges both on the floor and in the classroom. Coincidentally, our current training cycle focuses on customer service, and I take advantage of that to turn it into a discussion rather than a lecture. I address how our intent may be to communicate a set of instructions to help passengers process through more quickly, but we may be coming across as rude or abusive. As an example, I've heard someone tell passengers to be considerate of the person behind them by picking up their belongings and putting it together at the tables provided in the rear. I've challenged them with actually picking up a bin and saying something along the lines of, "sir (or ma'am), we have tables in the rear for you to use. Here, let me help you get your things over there." Just that little bit makes a difference between being perceived as rude and actually providing good customer service. I prompt others to come up with examples of situations they thought they handled well and situations where they intended to be helpful but things didn't come out so well. Point here is that I'm trying to get TSOs to look at things from the passenger's perspective.
And I always have a lead or supervisor in the class. I tell the class that at times there's that one passenger who perhaps has had a bad day, perhaps is on the way to a funeral or just left one, or for whatever reason has a lot going on in his or her life and the last thing that person needs is someone in a uniform telling them they can't take a half-empty bottle of water through the checkpoint. It's the last straw and they've decided to take a stand. I explain that supervisors make 25 cents an hour more than the rest of us (always gets a chuckle) and for that extra quarter, they have the wisdom, experience and maturity to handle these passengers. So we should never allow ourselves to lose our composure nor get into any pissing contests because we aren't paid that extra 25 cents to deal with it. But the supervisors ARE! So we should always refer such passengers to the supervisors. (For leads, I joke that we make an extra nickel more an hour. So we should make a nickel's worth of effort to resolve the situation before referring it to the supervisor who should be able to handle these situations five times more effectively!)