Underwriters in my business require the policyholders do a minimum 2-day refresher course/year, and the policyholders willingly pay for it. And I see the difference in attitude with many of the screeners I meet like to make up rules as they see fit rather than think (or even know).

Did those screeners pass their refresher course in the previous 12 months, very likely. But what exactly was taught can be easily measured on how they interact with passengers 2 months later.

I have been a trainer as well. I have even done Train the Trainer training.

I have trained people in processes that if they do not do them correctly, they could be injured or maimed. If they made even minor mistakes, one the first questions in the investigation was who trained them and I was held responsible for the mistakes of those I trained. Unfair? Maybe. But, no one got signed off as trained until they knew what to do and did it in a proper manner over a long period of time.

In the program in which I trained people, the trainees had to be developed over five years to reach competency. Only after they graduated were they held personally responsible for their performance. Up until that time, each and every one of us that had contributed to that person's training had shared responsibility.

The result was that all training was done intensely. The trainees were checked and double checked. They were watched while they worked. If they made even a minor mistake, they were called to task and the training was redone.

Ironically, the things I trained people to do were not nearly as important as the protection of air travel from terrorist attack. It was skilled factory work. Yet we took it much more seriously than your organization seems to take its training.

Your "Oh, well, I tried but they did it wrong anyway, so it is not my fault" approach may someday get someone killed. That is, if the job is really as important and integral to air travel safety as we are led to believe.

Is covert testing of screeners done to determine how they interact with travelers or is it just testing to see what items can be introduced.

What I am suggesting is a person just posing as a traveler evaluating the screeners performance or each screeners performance who the came in contact with. If the person is known to be an evaluator then this would not work.

Secret Shopper as was suggested by others on PV and here on FT is what I'm talking about.

That's not what I said. At the end of our instruction, I can verify that every student met standards because we document it. We can recall the specific lesson plan, date and time of instruction, instructor's name, type of evaluation, evaluator's name and any identified weaknesses, what was done to remediate that weakness, who conducted the remediation, how it was evaluated, and the results of the re-evaluation.

What I said, if you care to read for comprehension since it's been discussed in several posts, is that there is a limit from an instructor standpoint. Once the TSOs hit the floor, there's little the instructor can do until the next time the student appears in class for refresher training or remediation training. The rest of the time, it's the floor supervisors who have the real handle on the situation.

The key, as I commented earlier, is a team approach between the classroom instructors and floor supervisors. We have some initiatives along those lines at my airport, but it's a slow process. I'm optimistic.

Anytime you use quotes, you should be held accountable. The best method is to actually quote the post rather than attempting to paraphrase it. Shouldn't be too hard to do.

What scoring model does TSA use, i.e., 100 point, pass/fail, etc. and was is passing?

You are right, I should not have attributed words to you that you did not say even in paraphrase. That was not clear. I was attempting to establish a type of training/follow up by sarcastic title. More accurately I should have said:

The Oh, Well, the I Tried but They Did It Wrong Anyway, So It Is Not My Fault training program may someday get someone killed. That is, if the job is really as important and integral to air travel safety as we are led to believe.

Beyond that, do you suffer any repercussions when your trainees fail? You seem to say that once you are done, it is the supervisor's failure. In the days that I did my training the supervisor was responsible for the personnel aspect of the job and its training. Tasks such as getting to work on time, clocking in and out, interaction among coworkers, and such were trained by the supervisor and under their control. Technical aspects of the job were taught by the technical trainers who took responsibility for its completeness and effectiveness. If the trainee failed to perform the task correctly, it was at least partly my fault. (As clarification, in our system, the supervisor was both my supervisor and the supervisor of the trainee. He or she took responsibility of how I was trained, including my ability to train other workers.)

If we brought in outside trainers, and this is critical as it may more be your role, we had to sit in on the training and know what the training the trainee was getting from the outside source. If the outside source was correct, we would okay the training and take personal responsibility for it. If the training was incorrect the outside trainer was called out on the spot and told that the techniques were not acceptable. This was because I was responsible for even bad training by outside sources if I allowed them to continue.

So, it may not be you that is responsible for the training, it may be the supervisor. Therefore the question is whether they are are held mutually responsible with the line worker for failures of the line workers for training failures of even outside suppliers such as yourself. If not, then the system I suggested earlier is in place, a system in which failures have no one ultimately responsible to the point that no serious repercussions occur for both the trainee and the trainer when there is a failure.

A system in which only the trainee is responsible for his or her own training may not be an acceptable system in terms of ultimate effectiveness, particularly when they seem to be held only marginally responsible for their failures.

Care to comment on the training received by this screener at SAT, Bart?

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...tions-sat.html

Nice try to twist things around.

I want officers to be successful. I don't hold back when they are under my care and try to teach them everything I know that will help them succeed. However, I've realized over time that there is a limit to my efforts. That's just the nature of the beast.

When I have to remediate an officer, I ask myself what went wrong from the time I certified that officer to the circumstances that caused him to come back for remedial training.

Perhaps I was foolish enough to admit this concern so openly. I should have known that perfect people like you have this uncanny ability to get it right every time.

You conveniently ignored my point about seeking ways to resolve this concern by exploring an initiative to strengthen the team bond between trainers and supervisors.

Can the sun set, now, Your Perfectness?

I used to fly a ton and I reduced my travel a little bit after graduating from college and getting my first real job. But I now have a nice salary that would allow me to fly every weekend if I wanted to. I would fly to Disney World once a month if it weren't for the current airport security. I'd fly to vegas or some other touristy place every weekend if things at the airport were different. I have been to Hawaii numerous times, each time spending thousands of dollars on expensive hotels, sight-seeing tours/packages, and souvenirs. Each time, I stayed a minimum of a week. After a not so friendly encounter at one of their airports last Christmas, I will never fly to Hawaii again. EVER. I don't need to fly and will not fly anywhere unless absolutely necessary. I don't want to interact with the TSA. I'm sure there are nice tso's out there but that last four times that I flew between Nov - Dec 2010, I had horrible tsa interaction every single time. I'll just avoid the situation and stay home. Thank you TSA for saving me so much money!! I know the airlines won't care a bit but they are losing some of their good customers!!

Now, you are attributing things to me that I never said. I never said I was perfect. In fact I am far from it. I said I was held responsible for the times that the people I trained failed in their tasks. And I was. Multiple times. And most of the time I deserved it, but on rare occasions I did not. It did not matter. I was still held responsible. And I took the responsibility.

I used to try to explain to my boss that there was a limit to my abilities. He did not care. If I needed help with my abilities, he would get me the training I needed. He did, several times. One thing that was never permitted was excuses for the failures. There were no excuses, only reasons.

It was a tough work environment, but our goal was continuous improvement and a world class organization. The training and evaluation and retraining never ended. Everyone was constantly working at getting better and getting it right. Those that could not get with the program became former employees fairly quickly.

I also do not care how well you and the trainees or the supervisors and the trainees bond. I want them to do their job and do it right. If that occurs because of an adversarial relationship with management then so be it. Doing the job correctly and consistently, at least from my perspective, is more important than whether they bond with their supervisors.

If a line level worker is bonded to his or her supervisor it might even prevent acceptable remediation.

And for the record, you can turn off the snide, spiteful attitude. I was simply comparing the training I did in a manufacturing operation that had to continuously improve or go out of business to the description of the training process that you described. We did what we had to do in a highly competitive environment. If you have no competition taking your customers and trying to put you out of business, you may be able to do it differently and still be fine.

That's a load of bull. You were trying to characterize me as a lazy trainer. I called you on it, and now you come up with this BS explanation to justify yourself. And I'm calling you on that one, too.

For the record, I am constantly looking for ways to keep TSOs proficient beyond their initial training. It's a challenge, and I'm willing to look at different ways to follow through the initial training and periodic refresher training. There are a lot of dynamics involved; some of them beyond my control. I was merely acknowledging that before you decided to twist my words around.

I did not characterize you as a lazy trainer, and I do not think you are lazy. You are likely a very good trainer that cares significantly about the success of your trainees. What I was trying to determine, and I apologize that you took it as criticism of your specific abilities, was who is responsible, if anyone, for the failure of the trainees to get trained in the hopefully rare cases when the training does not "stick." If you could specifically show me where I said you were lazy or even inferred that you are, I would appreciate it. My discussion was simply a comparison of two different systems, the one I was subject to and the one you described. My discussion of your system never questioned either the ability or the conscientiousness of the trainers, it only sought to determine who was held ultimately responsible for the success of the training.

There were times when the people I was training just did not get it. In these cases, my supervisor would step in and first determine if I was training properly. If I was not, I was retrained. If I was, the trainee was given remedial training or released.

I also question if the system significantly allows for the unteachable to be appropriately reassigned or fired, but that is part of another discussion.

I do think that the system of training that is imposed upon you by your management imposes less direct responsibility on to you for the success of your trainees that the system that I was training in. That is not your fault nor something that you can do anything about. It is a part of the design of the system.

What we as the flying public see is a group of people that for the most part know what they are doing, but there are glaring inconsistencies that do not seem to go away. These are the type of inconsistencies that can only be eliminated by a well defined protocol that is competently trained.

The responsibility for whether the training is done properly can only fall in one of four areas:

1. It is the responsibility of the trainer. (The system I trained under.)
   
2. It is the responsibility of the trainee. (A system that I see often in industry that is generally a failure.)
   
3. It is the responsibility of the direct supervisor. (This is the system that you seem to describe. It is a good system if the supervisors are held accountable.)
   
4. It is the responsibility of no one. (An unthinkable system for safety systems, and usually only used in non-critical applications.)

If you are not directly held responsible for the success of your trainees, that is fine as long as someone is and everyone knows who it is. And by responsible, I mean that the responsible person faces repercussions for the failure of the training.

That's how I survive this whole process with my dignity intact, knowing that this is the highest station this person is capable of achieving in life - groping strangers and running their hands in their pants. I'd feel sorry for them but they're doing it voluntarily. At least they could have done something more respectable with their lives, like be an IRS agent.

This is why I feel sorry for for the tsa people who stand beside the radiation machines all day. They trust the people in charge of their organization, they believe that everything is safe. I have a feeling that when some of the workers start to develop cancer, the tsa won't care and wil leave them high and dry.