Originally Posted by
RoadVeteran
As I said earlier, I bear no harsh feelings toward you personally (unless you are one of the rude and incompetent TSA employees I have had to deal with) but your employer is one I would rank near the top of places and things I can honestly say I HATE
I hope most of us non-TSAers here can say this. I make it a point to be friendly and polite to TSOs. Why? Because that's common decency. Well, not really. It's because it makes my life easier.
The problem is that I have to fight myself to separate politeness from unnecessary cooperation with absurd rules and demands. It's almost always possible to make a stink while staying polite. It's easy for people (TSOs, for example) to mentally blow off an uncooperative passenger that's rude, loud, and/or obnoxious. It's much harder if the passenger is unfailingly polite and respectful.
Sometimes TSOs give me delayed replies-in-kind to my "Have a nice day," which indicates to me that my politeness wasn't expected.
