tom911

There's a difference between announcing and being a one-man public address system. I took the original post to mean the employee was LOUD.

Global_Hi_Flyer

A lot of IAD screeners and supervisors are on a power trip. It was at IAD that I heard an STSO use a commanding tone of voice to loudly tell someone that they had NO rights at the checkpoint and that he could have the police detain the guy to make sure he missed his flight.

InkUnderNails

I am deaf in one ear with significant hearing loss in the other. I appreciate loud.

What I do not appreciate is the arrogant, condescending, "I am in control and you WILL do what I say" tone that I often encounter.

I can take it, but I should not have too take it. I see passengers, particularly children, that are frightened in the checkpoint. I see elderly people abused and groped. I hear of possessions going missing. I have had perfectly normal items taken from me at the threat of "not flying today."

We surrender otherwise safe-in-any-other-environment items, bottles of water and soft drinks, pocket knives, small tools, powders and have to remind ourselves that anything we carry way be deemed dangerous and taken from us without recourse.

We are virtually stripped of our clothes and literally stripped of our dignity.

We are groped and prodded.

And it is not just the physical grabbing of highly intimate body parts. We have trained, to what extent and with what reliability is questionable, agents seeking to get us to say something that may indicate a nefarious intent when all we really want to do is get on a big shiny airplane and get far away. We get our thoughts probed, too.

We have to prove to a person of questionable ability the fact that our photo ID, the name on our travel documents and the face I am carrying on my head all match. This is done with absolutely no effect on the security of the flight but it does have the primary purpose, from my observation, of controlling the flow into the xray belts.

After all of this, we are rechecked while boarding.

Our drinks bought inside the sterile area are deemed suspicious and must be retested with magic paper.

Blue shirted controllers of our flying destiny roam the airport inside and out looking for that feather in their cap they get for finding the out-of-compliance passenger. Not the dangerous passenger. While they are rare, they miss those with some regularity.

They intervene in perfectly legal activities such as the photographing of public spaces and become little tyrants making up rules and law as they go, knowing all the time that our time sensitive schedules and the costs associated with flying reduces the options that we have to resist their ridiculous protestations.

And the rules from which they operate, and to which we are to acquiesce, are deemed to important to be known. They are secret. They are too valuable to the totalitarian-style system to be shared with a mere citizen.

They huff and puff and bully the folks that pay their salary though the mandatory fees that are tacked on to my ticket.

They are not all bad people. Some are nice. Many are nice.

But, even the nice ones are working in a not-so-nice system. The system itself is broken. It is a system designed to abuse, designed to humiliate and designed to tear way our humanity and make us just pieces of meat to be allowed into an airport at their discretion.

So, please, if you are going to abuse us, at least do it politely.

sailman

Doing things according to the announcements (i.e. keep belongings under your control), signage, TSA policies and protocol for passengers, doesn't insure that you will be following procedures as percieved by the TSO. This is compounded by their oft ignorance of carry-on items. No, a memory stick is not a lighter (when lighters were banned), no, net wt in excess of 3 oz (which is actually 3.4oz equivalent to 100 ml which is a measure of volume) is not a measure of volume.

In 99% of the times I have been taken to task for what I percieve as my lack of auditory skills, reading abilities, etc. I would surmise that the TSO either has no knowledge of the aforementioned information, or is applying their own criteria. On the other hand, if this behavior is justified by the need to confuse the bad guys, is it the belief that only the bad guys will be confused? I think not! So why be surprised that the TSOs feel the passengers got it wrong and therefore why all the yelling (i.e. according to the TSA passengers are to be treated with dignity!)?

Feel free to add your own list of TSO directives inconsistent with announcements and TSA published protocol.

goalie

and that is then the time to turn on the voice recorder on one's cell phone as lord knows, if you ask to have the security tape played back, you know sure as anything , there will be a problem with the audio*


*that is a) the tsa can find the tape and b) the recording actually worked

Wally Bird

I think it's pretty much inevitable. Some casual flyer, not au fait with the supergrope is going to react (appropriately IMO) to some mall cop grabbing his d*ck.

The outcome of the subsequent trial will be the important thing. If a judge and/or jury finds that what's going on at checkpoints does constitute sexual assault and is a blatant 4th Amendment violation that just might be the impetus to finally rein in the TSA.

Of course, the video recording would likely have been inadvertantly erased.

doober

Sadly, the TSA has taken that opportunity away from travelers as you should not have your cell phone in your possession as you are being assaulted.

Davidwnc

So yelling and whispering are the two choices?

goalie

nothing prevents me from having on while i'm waiting in line and listening to barker bob

doober

This is true.

goalie

so in line with...

me: i'd like a complaint form, please
tso supe: we don't have any
me: that's ok the, i'll use my own

we now have...

me: that's ok, have a look and listen to what i just recorded on my cell phone

cparekh

A better solution, I would think, would be to walk towards the end of the line and tell people, rather than scream it from far away.

This is true, some people are just really unable to follow directions. My feeling, though, is that the jist of the security procedure is rather simple to follow, and it has been the same for several decades now. In most instances, I feel, that if a large number of customers are doing a poor job of following the procedures, then it is because you, as an agency, are doing a poor job communicating it to them.

Perhaps louder yelling is the solution, but I think a different tactic might be in order.

LessO2

That's under the assumption you take one of the two posters you quoted seriously.

danl08

But isn't yelling at someone who doesn't speak English the best way to make them understand you? C'mon everyone knows that.....

Flaflyer

Heck yes, I went to publik skool and even I know that SHOUTING LOUD ENOUGH causes the other person's eardrum to magically vibrate out the other side in Mandarin or Swahili or Klingon as needed. Another example of TSA cutting edge science, right up there with BDO mind reading and . . .