This morning I got into MIA at 5AM. I was there early to see if I could get on the airport upgrade list.

5AM. There shouldn't be any line, right? I turn the corner and what do I see? A line with about 50 people in it and exactly one lane open. So, there I am fuming because chances are, by the time I get through security and on the list someone will be ahead of me. I woke up at 4AM for nothing.

The line snakes along and then suddenly a screener appears. He tries to hand me a yellow card saying "hey, can you hold onto this and bring it up to the "officer" at the detector?" I say no. He says "But you have to." I said "I'm not doing the TSA any favors this morning." He grunts and walks.

I did get my upgrade, though. But, in retrospect I think I should've taken the card from the screener, and then taken it with me on my flight so that the airline could know how long the flight took. I mean, they have to be at least as interested in time of flight as the the TSA is in queuing time, right?

Were you the last one in line when he tried to give it to you?

You could have asked the person behind you to pass it to the person behind them, and so on...

Ahhh yellow cards, I remember those until they got rid of them last year here. They came along with a time clock in which we always had to stamp the card on every hour at which point it's handed to the last person. When it gets back to the front there was that 'YELLOW CARD!" yell in which we would bring it back and stamp the card again to see the start and end time.

If you have plenty of time, take the yellow card, step out of line, go get a cup of coffee and come back in 45 minutes.