This past weekend at GSO we were extremely short-handed. I worked a double shift on the checkpoint this weekend. Saturday morning we started with 10 people to man the checkpoint. There are 5 people to a lane and that's one lane being a selectee lane, which also meant for lunches one lane would only be operating. With college fall break and the holiday weekend we seen triple the traffic. Normally a saturday is light. With about 1000 people for the day. We processed about 4 or 5 times that. When second shift arrived, they only had 7 people I made 8. No one from AM could stay over so that meant we didn't have enough people to run 2 lanes. We were stuck with only one lane and a boatload of passengers who were not too happy. This is only our south checkpoint too (Where delta, usair, united and american fly out of), our north checkpoint only had 5 on both shifts (where continental, northwest and airtran fly out). Yes we may have a small airport, but we do get busy. I don't understand why there is a misconception of smaller airports, maybe we don't process 10's of thousands of people a day, but, we don't have those 1500+ crews either. We have about 100 screeners total to man the checkpoints and baggage screening stations. There are 7 teams of screeners to vary days off and such, and like 3 or 4 to a team, some teams only have 2. so when 2 teams may be off, we can be extremely short. I guess I just wanted to vent because I was yelled at quite a bit this weekend. I think I only verbally bashed maybe 2 or 3 people both days. Yesterday was even worse, we only had 9 people on AM and 6 on PM for the checkpoint. If you're going to say why not send some baggage people to the checkpoint to help out? We can't....they aren't certified to man the checkpoint yet. Only baggage. We're working on crosstraining everyone. My biggest complaint though is that yesterday evening they announced in our de-briefing that they are cutting out overtime. How retarded is that. We can barely run the checkpoints with the people we have and now you just want to make it worse. OMG, what are they thinking? As far as verbally bashing passengers, There were those few occasions where someone came through late for their flight and blamed it on us. Yes it is partially our fault, but don't shoot the messenger. I try to tell people that often. Why don't passengers understand that if they were just calm and relaxed it would be so much easier to process them. Instead they get frustrated from the wait, they don't pay attention to what we are saying and they might end up alarming because they were in a hurry and didn't take anything off, like watches, coins, shoes...whatever. Then they don't want to cooperate when we have to wand them or search a bag. One inparticular incident involved a disgruntled gentleman who was running late for a flight and not only did he beep coming through but he had a hatchet is in carry-on bag. So the xray person called a bag check, I took his bag while another screener wanded him and as I was the acting-supervisor for the moment I had to break the bad news that he couldn't carry the hatchet on board with him.....and he asked why not? So we went back and forth for a moment as I tried to explain his options, he didn't want to hear it and became irate tried to pull his bag away from me, and when I told him he couldn't have his bag back yet, he threatened that if he missed his flight or if I gave him the chance to get in his bag he was more than prepared to take my life with his "GOD D@mn" Hatchet as he put it so nicely. So as passenger were walking through the checkpoint watching this man several had stopped to watch the comedic performance he had displayed for them. I told him from the get go if he would have been clam and patient he would be on the plane by now. Once he threatened my life, he jerked his bag away and pushed me to the side and fearing he was about to attack me, I subdued him until officers arrived. I probably should have let him go down to the gate and call the airline and tell them he could not board and it would have been handled nicely, but at the moment I was actually 99% sure he was gonna take out his hatchet and do some damage. I decided yesterday it was time to take a small vacation so I put in for 2 days off and now I'm chilling at home watching some movies and talking to you guys. What an interesting weekend....Don't you think?

Man am I glad I don't have to deal with morons like that any more. Those on here who complain bitterly about the screening do not realize that sometimes there are idiots out there who do not know why they cannot bring their hatchet/gun/machete with them when they fly and get belligerent when given their options. Maybe if they had to deal with a "winner" like that they might not see things the same way.

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Don't take life too seriously, afterall, you won't get out alive.

Yes, that guy was a MORON.

But, FIVE screeners to a lane! That is just plain MORONIC.

A lane could EASILY be run with 3 screeners. One To watch the x-ray. One to watch the lane and One to wand.

It is wasting valuable resources to put a screener at the mouth of the machine to "Suggest/Remind" that people remove their Metal Objects and Laptops. There are PLENTY of signs for that and anyone too STUPID to read said signs deserves to be secondary harrassed.

Well...the problem there is people do not think of gum foil, or foil in cigarette packs, or much less anything other than coins, keys and cellphones. The xray person could be the one to remind people so that eliminates a que person. But people will still alarm and without a male and a female screener available to wand and search you have a problem. In order for every passenger to be screened by whoever is available the public would have to agree with cross-gender screening and most likely would end up in signing a waiver stating they wouldn't accuse TSA of any type of harassment by such an event. A lane generally needs five screeners to run it properly and efficiently. I've got many years in security and customer service and I will tell you, you would have a very long line with only 3 screeners to a lane. So if the public wants it they can have it at the price of fast processing. If every person did not alarm and did not have any prohibited items in their bags then yes it is feasable to run a lane with so few people. But the way it is currently presented it needs at least five. Well, I found out today that I am going to have to appear in court in about a month for his hearing....that ought to be alot of fun.

Plus you need one to run the EDT machine. More efficient if you have one more to cover the x-ray while the other one or two are bag checking. So, 5 per lane. That's the best number. I've done it with three before but it bogs down very quickly.

The person at the front at are airport is three times more important then the said wander.

If the person up front can make sure you have nothing else on you, and load the belt so reruns might not be a problem, then it keeps a lane running.

Now if you get no one out front and you have a mix of FF and new PAX, its a problem. Because a lot of PAX don't read those signs and never have. They come up and stand there waiting for instructions and hold up the line because of it.

A person up front can play both the role of entry and wand, while helping to speed up the process.

And personally, if it was three screeners at a lane, I would want a Xray, Walkthru and a bag check. Bag checks are more important in my view then any wanding.

A lane CANNOT be "easily" run w/3 ppl. Again, another FTer that knows nothing of what they speak. "One to watch the lane" ???? What the !@#$ is that ?? Who does the bag search ? What happens when a male & a female alarms ? Who's the freakin' moron now ?

There is still the problem that people are being harassed when they do not set off the alarm - either for the continuous harassment reason or for the shoe fetish reason or whatever. This crap still goes on at SDF. I don't know if it also goes on at GSO but getting rid of it and your a-hole management will go a long way in getting the passengers' attitudes to improve.

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"Give me Liberty or give me Death." - Patrick Henry

Spiff, after many months of being a baggage screener, I have now been thrust back into the passenger screening mess. I couldn't agree with you more. I really don't understand the mentality of the "secondary screening syndrome". To me, it's not at all effective, and just pisses pax off that much more. As you say, hopefully this will go away soon, but don't hold your breath


[This message has been edited by TakeScissorsAway (edited 10-14-2003).]

Ihave worked in Security LONGER than probably 90% of the TSA Employees. I KNOW what I am talking about.

Easily 3, 4 is a luxery. 5 is OVERKILL.

Yes, you may have worked in SECURITY longer, but the TSA is NOT security. It is there SOLELY to prevent unauthorized items from being taken aboard an aircraft. In order to do that it has been deemed that any screening will HAVE to be same sex screening. If the 3 screeners you propose are all male, or all female, then there is a HUGE problem. The object is to make the process as quick as possible and while I agree that it COULD be done with 3 screeners, the lines would be so long as to cause delays that have yet to be seen.

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Don't take life too seriously, afterall, you won't get out alive.

So the main purpose of the 5th person per lane is to have one male and one female for secondary, right?

So in the GSO situation described above, where they had 8 screeners available and only one lane open, they could have put a male secondary screener on one lane, a female on the other, assigned the pax to the lanes by gender (w/ exception of small children w/ opposite-gender parents, who probably don't require same-sex screening and/or hopefully don't get SSSS very often.), and opened 2 lanes.

Either that or run one lane with 5 and another with 3, and make it known that if you beep on the understaffed lane, you go to the back of the line for the fully-staffed lane. FFs who know the system and are smart enough to get the dime out of their pocket and take off their belt would gravitate toward the second one.

Not a perfect situation, but better than having only one lane open. That is the kind of common-sense on-your-feet flexibility lacking in most govt. agencies and policies, certainly including TSA.

Btw, Fenito, good luck testifying against the guy who threatened you with a hatchet. Verbal abuse is one thing, but that sounds like assault with a deadly weapon. Completely inexcusable. Yes, he probably "didn't mean it," was having a "bad day," or will claim to be "mentally ill," but he still deserves some jail time for this one.

Good idea... if you want screener assaults to shoot up 50%.

We work this job 40 hours a week. We know when we're overstaffed and when we're understaffed. 5 is the magic number for most situations. I'd say 4 is the minimum but 5 gives you the safety margin for different-sex checks and the frequent times when you have to do several bag checks in a row. 5 keeps it going... an extra $13/h is worth it to keep airplanes from being delayed I think.

That's interesting, I don't remember seeing a large number of private screeners per lane two years ago, there were more passengers back then, and there were very, very rarely any lines.



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"Yippie-kay-yay, Mr. Falcon!" -- John McClane, Die Hard II As Seen on TV