Poll: Holding on to ticket at checkpoint?
 

When you show your ticket to the screener, do you let it out of your hands, or do you hold on to it while they look at it?

The ID checkers almost always want to hold the ticket themselves. They don't necessarily say it, but their body language does.

The TSA Supreme Officers or whatever we're calling them today are about 50-50 between wanting to hold it and not.

They usually want to scribble some letters/numbers on it so I hand it over, let them do their thing and then it's back in my pocket in 5 seconds.
Never had a problem with this.

They weren't scribbling on it (actually, haven't seen that in a while). The guy wanted to hold it but didn't say anything; he just tried to rip it out of my hands. I wasn't going to let go until he asked for it; he tried to send me to secondary instead. Called a super and things cleared up -- no secondary.

You forgot the third option: have the screener slide the ticket from your shirt pocket, check it, and slide it back. This is not uncommon among the juggling-three-phones-and-two-coffees set at the US Shuttle checkpoint at BOS.

In SLC the ID screener scribbles some sort of symbol or initial, however the TSA screener is OK just looking at it. I find that at some checkpoints, the TSA officer :D wants to see it before you go through the detector (SLC) and in most other places the screener waving you through wants to see it, but I never have to let go of it to the TSA.

After I saw a passanger drop his boarding card in the urinal I vowed never to touch another boarding pass again...

At my airport, the TSA screeners are required to check the boarding pass (since the ID checkers don't check for SSSS). We also have to initial it, so they can track us down if we miss a SSSS. For me, personally, it is easier to initial it while supporting it with my palm. If a passenger had some objection to this, and wanted to hold onto it him/herself, I would have no problem initialling it in his/her hands as long as I can positively determine that s/he is not a SSSS.

That, plus the large portion of people that hold them in their mouths while de-accessorizing. A lot of WTMD screeners here wear their gloves at this position, though they aren't required to :p