Comment about Qatari/UAE coins being pretty but worthless was meant to be dripping with xenophobic $arca$m but maybe didn't receive as such—sorry.

Your troubles at SJC don't surprise me; fortunately haven't seen the gaggle of dowager screener princesses wearing so many diamond rings they scratched computer screens when handling them in years: the others I don't use often enough to have an average.

Happy travels...

Well, Spiff, I used to do that, but it generally turned out to be a forty-minute wait on bad hold music before getting disconnected and starting over. If I did reach a human long enough to receive a lecture on how the event was either my fault or impossible or both, and be given a file number, nothing ever came of it until I called to find out why and would be told there was no record of said file number. This thread? They recognize me there.

Eventually I decided my own time was invariably wasted with no skin off their nose, and devoted the newly-freed hours to reading edifying literature.

However, I have taken a page from their book. The love-note has inspired me. I do not steal things, but where I've been, in seatback pockets, restroom stalls, gate benches, etc. appear pocket Constitutions, small notes with the trouble escalation hierarchy, preprinted complaint/compliment forms, 4th Amendment discussion, or little copies of the poster. It may not turn sheeple into wolves, but just maybe, someone will be encouraged to think.

No screener has ever had consent to invade my belongings—implied, imputed, confirmed, affirmed, revised, mixed, shaken or stirred.

Ah - didn't catch that.

There must have been 50 coins in the bag - to sort out the US ones seems ridiculous. Surely there are easier pickings than sorting through bags of coins?

I once found a Guatemalan coin in my bag after a domestic US flight, but I am still down overall.