I've read a lot of crazy stories here. OP's version seems like one of those stories you embellish a little more every time you tell it to another buddy. Would love to hear the real story.

OP - I hope someone gives you a hug tomorrow. It's clear from the anger in this thread that you've been shorted a few in your lifetime.

Maybe you are right about the story. However, it strikes a chord for me remembering the days when my Nexus card was viewed as a mysterious alien object that may have just fallen from the sky. My personal best was eight simultaneous TSA people, two in suits, and at least one I could not see on the other end of a phone, trying to decide if I could proceed through the checkpoint. I had multiple ID's, and they would ask, but I would repeat as nicely as possible "The Nexus is an acceptable ID according to your own SOP." I stood to the side while many people looked at my "detention" at the TDC wondering what sort of dangerous old fat guy they had caught. The sauce on the pudding was that it was national opt out day, but I was at a check point without scanners.

I loved it. It was a fun game that I never lost. All it required was tons of polite, a smile, lots of time, and being right. I finally figured out why I never lost, but that is a whole different post.

Pre-Check finally got them all trained, and the Nexus is not nearly as much fun as it used to be. Passive aggressive? Yep, but what's it to ya? Huh? :)

I think I need a hug.

I had exactly the same experience -- and posted it on Flyertalk -- trying to use my Global Entry card as ID at JFK Terminal 2. Upteen TSA people, including two supervisors and a screening manager, insisted that it wasn't valid, and I kept repeating calmly that it was issued by the very same Federal government department that employs them! This went on for a very long time -- seriously, it was minimum 30 minutes -- until a young TSA guy stumbled onto the situation and explained to his superiors what Global Entry is. In his words, "This is the best ID anyone could possibly have." The TSA crew went into a huddle, and when they came out of it, I was allowed to pass. It was really quite bizarre. Of course, today my GE card is accepted unquestioningly at every airport.

Bruce

Rhetorical question: why does it always seem to take half-a-dozen or more TSA employees to settle a question that's clearly answerable by their own published policies and documents? I mean, stuff that isn't "SSI?"

It's painfully obvious to any observer that the TSA deliberately hires people who are complete frickin' idiots.

They could just Google it on a personal electronic device and find their answer immediately, since they obviously weren't paying attention in class.

I suppose the relatively low pay doesn't attract the best and the brightest. Neither does working for the Federal government (though I did that myself during 1979-88!).

But, to be fair, one of the supervisors who had been most adamant about my GE card being invalid, actually apologized to me, and the apology seemed genuine. She said that GE cards are new (which was true then), and the TSA staff are just learning about them. I actually felt sorry for her for a moment. She was really trying to do her job well but didn't have the necessary information to do that -- and, I suppose, didn't have the personal skills to figure it out on her own, using Google or whatever.

Bruce

Let me offer some thoughts compatible with this viewpoint.

1) I suspect that the total number of regulations and procedures that TSOs have to deal with is enormous. And given TSA's penchant for adding more procedures every year, instead of removing them, the task of knowing everything gets more and more difficult. Given that there are millions of passengers everyday who interact with mere thousands of TSOs, it's not at all surprising that there are reports of passengers who know one specific rule better than the TSOs asked to enforce it.

2) So, the obvious retort is: "train them better!" That works, up to a point. The besetting fallacy under which most teachers operate is "if I said it, then they learned it". (I know; I'm a teacher myself, and I fall prey to that fallacy more often than I care to admit.) Training has to be reinforced. The percentage of passengers who use GE cards was (and is) pretty small; all the training sessions in the world about uncommon situations like a GE card won't be effective unless the student actually sees GE cards frequently enough for the training to take hold. As you note, I suspect this situation is getting better, as more reinforced training goes on paired with more passengers using GE cards.

3) Then why aren't they simply looking up the rules? A couple of reasons.

a) There's no reason to look up a rule if you "know" you're correct. This has been demonstrated any number of times in other contexts; an expert usually knows when she doesn't know something, but a novice usually doesn't know when she doesn't know something.

b) They may not have the capability to look up the rules. I don't know if TSOs regularly have access to computational devices (of whatever sort), much less network access, much less secured network access to be able to access the information denied to the general public. Even if they do, it may be difficult to find the "needle in a haystack" in order to confirm the passenger's claim regarding the rules.

In short: even for competent TSOs, TSA makes the jobs of TSOs incredibly difficult by giving them a huge set of rules to enforce without adequate support. This is a structural issue that TSA could fix in any number of ways --- should it make it a priority.

If it weren't for the abject failure of the TSA in general to know stupid-basic rules like "photography is not prohibited by TSA regulation," I'd tend to agree with what you've said.

Since we know there are still significant numbers of TSA employees who have failed to absorb the stupid-basic rules, it's obvious that anything more complex can't be trained into them.

See, I'm not even sure that rule is that simple.

TSA itself complicates matters by saying official-sounding-but-completely-nonbinding things like "We ask you not to take pictures of the SSI screens", which convey the notion of a rule but without the authority of one. TSA also complicates matters by saying "You are not permitted to disrupt the screening process", without defining what "disrupt" means, leaving TSOs to decide for themselves whether or not taking photographs is disruptive.

Which returns to one of my earlier points. TSA has created a system with too many rules, procedures, policies, and "suggestions" for anyone to fully understand --- TSOs and passengers included.

I agree with much of what you have said here but I would like to add my perspective on points (1) and (2) above. I'll try to explain why, although I may agree with your points, I'm not willing to cut TSA much slack over their inability to properly train their employees. I'm basing my comments on my 20 years of experience as a game official with youth sports leagues.

That environment is one where there are also lots of rules and procedures that have to be enforced every day, many of which are obscure and don't come into play very often. (Want to tackle the infield fly rule? How about when a team bats out of order but it isn't discovered until 2 batters later?) Additionally one often has very young, inexperienced people involved. I was often partnered with teenagers who were just beginning as umpires. Also, many of the people we dealt with were more excited than the most irate passenger at a checkpoint and we had to do our jobs with many (occasionally hostile) onlookers, many equipped with cameras.

Despite that, my league's officiating crews consistently performed at a higher level of professionalism that most TSA checkpoint I have passed through. Why? Because the league officials (management) and the umpires themselves were committed to doing what was required to deliver a professional result. To give one example, every night before play started we would gather and briefly discuss any unusual situations from the previous night, refresh our knowledge of the rules and share any learning experiences.

This one simple step - daily mini-training sessions - would go a long way to fixing much of what causes frustration with TSA. If TSA would implement a 10 minute mini-review before each shift start then someone could say something like, "Hey, I saw a new ID yesterday. It was a Nexus card. Turns out that it's perfectly valid. Just wanted to let you know if you see one." Things like this are simple management techniques that anyone can implement. The whole Nexis, Global Entry, etc. confusions could have been cleared up within 48 hours of the first occurrence. The only things missing were: a) a desire on TSA employees' part to do a professional job, and/or b) total incompetence by TSA management. Why did it take so long for everyone to get the message on Nexus IDs? It's quite simple - hardly anyone in TSA really cared about "doing it right".

I'm not so certain that these people are all trying to resolve an issue. TSA screeners seem to "swarm" whenever there is an issue, whether it be with an "unknown" ID or a problem passenger at the checkpoint. I believe they are taught this procedure as a method of intimidation; they aren't interested in resolving the problem but rather than making the passenger back down.

What I hate is that when I opt out, oftentimes they send my baggage through, and tell me to "stand here" and wait for someone to pat me down. Often "here" is not within sight of my belongings, and I've had a couple TSOs at ORD get really annoyed that I insisted on standing somewhere where my bags were in my sight. One angrily told me not to put my things through if I'm opting out, and another yelled at me for "obstructing" the line by not putting them through.

Doesn't matter whether they're taught to do it as a form of intimidation or it's just poor discipline in the workplace and they're all 'lookie loos'.

Either way, it puts me at risk, as it demonstrates how effective a diversion could be at the checkpoint. A 'lookie loo' TSO who is craning his/her neck to see what's going on or who wanders from his/her 'standing around' post to gawk is a TSO who is not focused on his/her job.

Yes, this continues to be a problem.

It's not foolproof, but always lock your carry-ons before putting them in the xray.

I've caught TSOs on more than one occasion trying to get into my bag outside my line of sight - indeed, in circumstances where they didn't even know whose bag they were attempting to open. They don't like it, but it isn't prohibited, and it does force them to do it in my sight.

Note: a supervisor at PHX T2 said that there is no 'rule' that TSA can only inspect your bags in your presence or even with your knowledge. This came up when they got into an outside unzipped pocket (only made that mistake once) without my knowledge behind my back while I was being groped. They were, of course, unable to get into the rest of the bag because it was locked, but I had stupidly stuffed my BP/ID in the unlocked outside pouch that one time. They had taken copies because it was 'procedure' (supposedly) for involuntary medical opt-outs at that checkpoint.

FWIW, this is either a lie or not regularly done, because I've been through that checkpoint before when I do know that no copies were made of my BP/ID because I was physically unable to use the NoS.

"THIS time" with a stern warning face??

I agree, but there are certain rules which, even if they are subject to regular change, should be known by specialized personnel.

Example: Anyone who mans a TDC should KNOW the entire list of acceptable IDs, should KNOW the criteria by which an ID is determined to be acceptable or not, and should be expected to review both the list and the criteria on a regular basis for any additions, subtractions, or alterations.

In other words, the most basic portion of a person's job is the one part of the convoluted TSO rules and procedures that they can and should ALWAYS be expected to know backwards, forwards, and upside-down. Not knowing an obscure rule involving proper screening of a rare medical device that only has two or three prototypes in the entire world is forgivable; a person whose job it is to check IDs not knowing which IDs are acceptable is not.

What you're describing is not "mini-training sessions", it's a simple daily briefing, which is performed in hundreds of other professions from waiters to cops to construction workers to pilots to (I'm guessing) the folks who rev up the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in the morning. In point of fact, I believe even NFL refs and MLB umpires have a pre-game briefing like yours, as well.

My guess is that TSA doesn't bother to do a daily briefing because their people operate on staggered shifts, making the logistics of such a briefing more difficult. Instead of altering the work schedules to accommodate such a briefing, they simply blow it off, which is just another symptom of unbelievably poor management practice inside TSA.

Nah, it's not trained into them to swarm.

It's trained into them that if they don't know the answer, pass the buck.

It's never been trained into them to look up the answer, they simply pass the question up the line from TSO to LTSO to STSO to TSM to AFSD, sometimes with duplicates of each position coming into play. Nobody wants to make the wrong decision, so nobody makes any decision at all, yet none of them are trained well enough - or have the basic inteligence - to actually look up the answer in the book rather than asking someone else who doesn't know the answer, either. And once someone has been asked, they're involved, and won't leave till the issue is resolved; hence, the snowballing of personnel from one to a dozen in the space of 30 minutes.

Ink's solution during his Nexus problems often nipped it in the bud: He put a sticker on the back of his Nexus card stating that the Nexus was item #7 on the SOP list of acceptable IDs. Now, I don't know how many (if any) TDCs actualy bothered to crack the book and verify the sticker's assertion, but I do know that many of the TDCs let him pass after reading that sticker, without passing the buck on up the line.

Perhaps the sticker simply had an aura of confident authority to it.