You are more than welcome to jump right in there and invent to your hearts content. Imagine the $$$ you could make if you were the one to actually solve this problem. The world would beat a path to your door.

Until then, we will continue to use the technology we have and the technology that we can get.

Until then, you need to hire COMPETENT PEOPLE and invest in TRAINING, not people that would otherwise get rejected at McDonald's. A government agency exists to fulfill a purpose, not to keep the unemployment numbers down by hiring the otherwise unemployable.

In fact, until they prove their competence (or their status on the evoluntionary ladder as homo sapien sapiens), TSA monkeys need to be rehired at $7 an hour and no benefits. If we're going to get incompetence, we might as well get it cheap.

So, I should tell the folks I work with that have masters degree�s and doctorates that you do not consider them to be employable because of who they work for now. How � ignorant of you. So someone who only has an associates degree or a bachelor�s degree is completely unemployable in your opinion. Interesting. I�ll be sure and tell that to every person graduating from the local university this year, I�m sure that they will be happy to know that in your opinion that they have completely wasted the last 2 to 4 years of their lives.

And instead hire folks like yourself who have no background knowledge or experience in security or, well pretty much anything useful to the TSA? Right? They did that, from about 1972 through 2001. Right about the time when all those airlines were being hijacked. Worked out well didn�t it.

How many TSOs working at CPs at your airport do you personally work with whom you know, for a fact, have master's degrees or doctorates? Be specific - count them up. And in what subjects did they earn these advanced degrees? Again, be specific. You don't have to name names, just count them up and list the degrees. Unless that info is SSI, that is.

Now, I have never ASKED any of the TSOs who man the CPs whether they were entitled to put Dr. before their name, but I've never seen Dr. on any TSOs name tags.

Fergle University.

-RadioGirl, Proud holder of a PhD in Midwestern Humor from Fergle University. And I've got the t-shirt to prove it.

It doesn't take a master's degree or a PhD, a BA or even a high school diploma to know that some random stranger should not be feeling your crotch and your wife's crotch at US travel venues if you haven't committed a crime and are not suspected of committing a crime. The US Constitution's 4th Amendment merely formalizes that basic human insight.

There is no excuse for not knowing that. There is no excuse for willingly performing those actions on a stranger as TSA does.

Wow those grope points are practically an ivory tower of elites.

Other airports even have Federal judges working as TSOs.

We should be so thankful that TSO don't waste their time figuring out string theory, curing cancer, pondering orbital mechanics, and instead have devoted their lives to rubbing the genitals of strangers, stacking bins and looking at naked children from a secret room.

Really a sad commentary on employment in this country if the best job a PhD can get is groping innocent people in airports.

Somehow, I'm reminded of this cartoon:
http://lost.co.nz/main/library/space...ps/urinal2.png
(warning, not safe for work, small children, or well, anyone really)

You're probably looking at a 3-striper there. At least this one isn't leaving it on the ground or flinging it at fares.

Does it matter?

Obviously, those (probably fictional) with master's degrees and/or doctorates who might be working as TSA employees are unemployable elsewhere - or they'd be employed elsewhere.

I do wonder where they got fired from that made the TSA their only remaining viable opportunity for employment, though.

I'm sure some of the higher-ups in the TSA are well-educated, but Ron's post implying that your average frontline TSO's are doctors or masters is just over the top and is obvious B.S. As a frequent traveler, I find it highly questionable whether the Smurfs I run into can even read, let alone think critically or complete 6-8 years' worth of higher education. And even less likely that once they did, their dream job would grabbing my balls for $20k/yr. The economy has been bad the last couple years, but not THAT bad.

Ron: Rather than speaking in valueless generalities, why don't you show us ONE...and I just mean a single verifiable instance...of a front-line TSO with a doctorate. Mail-order degrees don't count. A single example would suffice.

It's not a machine problem, it's operator incompetence.

Considering that we are still deep in the throes of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the fact that someone with a master's or doctoral degree can't find employment in their chosen field and took a job as a TSO most certainly does NOT mean that they are "unemployable" elsewhere, nor does it necessarily mean that they were "fired" from some other job.

Have you ever suffered a long-term layoff and been forced to take whatever job comes along when your unemployment benefits run out? It ain't a picnic, I tell ya WHUT.

My point was that Ron's assertion that there were a lot of front-line TSO's with master's and doctorates seemed mighty far-fetched, even in this economy. I'm sure there ARE some. And I'm sure Ron has met some of them. But I asked him to back up his assertion with numbers, because I feel that he's trying to prove a point with thinly-disguised hyperbole.

My gut feeling is that the degreed TSOs are the exception, rather than the rule, because even in my limited experience, I have yet to meet a TSO whose behavior, command of the English language, or general comportment led me to suspect they were highly educated folk.

Most of them that I've encountered seem like fairly average blue-collar people (like myself), with a high-school diploma and perhaps a little college or technical school of some kind.

A few seemed like imbeciles. Fortunately, the imbeciles and the power-trippers have been tiny minorities in my dealings with TSA.

If they can't find employment in their chosen field, then they are by definition "unemployable" in that field at the time. I've never been laid off long-term - the last time I was laid off, I was "unemployed" for all of fifteen minutes. No joke. That said, I have many friends and acquaintances with varying degrees of education who've been through long-term unemployment in their chosen field, and have gone to work doing things like waiting tables, bartending, and even pumping out port-a-potties to make ends meet.

None of them are working for the TSA.


You haven't flown through PHX or ATL in the last two years, have you?