Don't Look At Me!
 

Due to a young-adulthood that occasionally included spectacular motorcycle crashes and some resulting surgery, I am unable to fully comply with with the TSA's requests to "Lift your feet/arms up higher!" irregardless of how loud they yell at me during the wanding.

Perhaps I've already put the inspector in a bad frame of mind by the time we get to the pat down because the inevitable "Don't look at me!!! Look straight ahead!!" seems to make the veins in their foreheads bulge when I don't heed their advice.

I'm sorry but I WILL closely watch everything the groper does despite repeated (and usually loud) warnings not to. There's obviously no penalty for ignoring the request because I always do. I've seen them red faced and spitting because of this.

This scenario is usually accompanied by the "Can you put your palms up?!!" vein bulge which is an added bonus for me.

What's up with the 'Don't look at me' rule? Is there any real reason for this?

I don't know who's been groping you, but I always look at the groper with a look that says our little encounter would be going very differently if it weren't for their little tin star and a police officer nearby.

Fragile ego.

Well, for starters, if you're watching the TSO doing the wanding, that means you're not watching your stuff over on the x-ray belt~

Also, it has to do with the technique pattern and the screening of the head. It's far more easier done if your facing more or less straight ahead instead of having your head turned. It's never typically been a problem for me, except for a couple times when a guy turns his head suddenly as I'm wanding down the side of his head and he turns into the wand.

So, mostly, it seems to be a housekeeping thing.

The palms-up thing is supposedly so that you can't be palming something. Personally, I think that particular aspect of it is kinda' stupid. Having your hands more or less 'open' should be quite sufficient for that task, and even if I thought you were trying to palm something, it's not exactly a big imposition for me to tilt my head and glance under your hand.

Dean how can you seem so sensable when we see and hear about these other TSO's who are 180 out from you?

There has to be a disconnect somewhere.

I agree but I'm gonna ask about this one anyway.
Are you allowed to tell us why you wand the side of someone's head? Wearing a turban, bulging bandage over the ear, sure. But otherwise? IEDs hidden in the ear canal? Electronics buried in fillings? The mind boggles.

I have to admit when I've been secondaried I was so intent on watching my stuff and getting the heck out of there, I didn't notice.

Standardization. Use the same approved motions on everyone and no brain is required.

Not every TSO is a Dean. :D

It's been my experience that when people have negative experiences, they tend to... exaggerate. Their personal emotions invested into it, they paint it - sometimes consciously, sometimes not - in an absolutely positively worse light than it likely actually happened. If there was no exaggeration, you'd think every TSO at every checkpoint was absolutely screaming at the top of their lungs while throwing Hitler salutes and grabbing people's crotches while their cohorts made off with their cell phones, twisting their mustaches over the railroad tracks.

One could make the argument that the truth is often somewhere in the middle. It's a logical fallacy to assume that just because two people take diametrically-opposing positions on something, that the truth is always going to be dead-center of the two points of view, but, logical fallacy or not, that tends to be the way things work out most of the time. Rather something like human nature, I should think.

As far as veins bulging and such? Mm. While I personally doubt that the TSOs go off like Ren, it could very well be a frustration thing. Most of the time, the screening process is lengthened not by TSOs deciding to capriciously screw with the passengers, but by passengers actually interfering with it. Sometimes they try to 'help.' Sometimes they try to complain. Either one can stretch it out, but I can almost guarantee you that the only thing the TSO has in his mind is that he wants to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Me, I'm in no rush. I get paid by the hour, so you can take as much time as you want with anything, and I'll be cool about it.

An example:

We have to conduct routine and random screening. With respect to Jim, who states that it's practically a mathematical impossibility for a human to overcome prejudices and such to be genuinely random, I can say in good faith that I've never been anything but unpredictable in the folks that I pull over for additional screening, even when there's been no alarm.

One such gentleman that I pulled over immediately started launching into a calm tirade about constitutional rights and the 4th Amendment. He wasn't yelling, per se, but he did have a hard edge in his voice.

I stood there patiently, my hands folded in front of me, until he had finished expressing himself, and then I gave him two things - a by-the-book statement, and the implied-consent ruling of the court systems.

The by-the-book statement was something along the lines of everyone having to be screened, and that there were varying levels of screening done for different reasons, but that the end-result was to ensure that no weapons or explosives got into the sterile area. A lot of blahblahblah, mostly.

He then proceeded to ask why I pulled him over. I explained that we are required to perform continuous and relatively unpredictable screening on people at all times during screening operations.

He asked me why I pulled him, specifically, over. With a thumb over my shoulder directed at the STSO, I said, "Because you're the next one in line that came through the walk-through, and if I didn't, he [the STSO] was going to start fussing at me."

That answer apparently kind of threw him. He gave a laugh that I would only be able to call 'bitter,' then threw his arms out to the side and told me to get on with it. I told him to lower his arms because it wasn't that kind of a search, patted down the front of his torso (think, for the most part, stomach area) and then told him to have a good day as I gestured back to the x-ray lane.

Him: "That was it!?"

Me: "That's it, man."

All told, the exchange took about four minutes. Two and a half seconds of which was actually me screening him. Still, while he was speaking, I felt it was my responsibility to pay him my full and undivided attention, and to attempt to answer all of his questions to the best of my ability, which I was apparently able to do in a satisfactory manner. The ending didn't satisfy him, though. He moved off toward his stuff in a relative fury, muttering to himself.

Hm. Maybe I should have given him the works. At least then it wouldn't have been quite so anticlimactic compared to what he was expecting.

Sorry. I rambled off into Never-Never Land compared to what you had actually asked.

Still, it's just my personal viewpoint that getting angry would solve nothing. I've had to, from time to time, take on a more authoritarian voice ("Sit down, sir." as opposed to "Take a seat, man."), but those are the exceptions, rather than the general rule.

Pretty much, yep.

Ostensibly, it's to check for items hidden in hair. If a person has no hair to speak of (i.e.; a head like mine, which is to say, shaved completely) then there's really no need to wand the head at all. Otherwise, the wanding starts at the top of the head, and proceeds on to outline the body. Going down the side of the head helps to ensure that you properly screen the shoulder where it joins the neck, too.

Dean the phrase "Do me a favor" works wonders for giving commands to people that don't want commands.

"Do me a favor and lift your arms".

I was going to say everything Dean jut said, only he said it better than I could. I have to remind people to look straight ahead when I'm wanding around the head so I don't accidently hit them with the wand/they hit the wand with their head.

Maybe they think you are prettier than Dean?

When I worked in mental health, occasionally I had patients who were sexual predators. Offenders often tell victims not to look at them during an attack in order to depersonalize them and reduce guilt. It also reduces the victim's ability to accurately describe them afterwards.

Non-sociopaths whose jobs require them to invade others' personal space may experience significant discomfort from having to do so: avoiding eye contact allows them to more easily objectify the person, and protects them from the implied hostility of a direct stare.

LEOs and correctional personnel become desensitized to this because most people they search are suspected/convicted of criminal activity, so their personal safety legitimately requires touching the person. Health workers, on the other hand, desensitize because they are expected to help, by doing so, the person whose space is being invaded.

TSOs work with the general public so don't fit either category; thus, their discomfort levels may remain higher despite experience. They may compensate either by "repersonalizing" the searchee, trying to make the process appear consensual and mutual, or alternatively by exaggerating the power differential and enforcing their "authoritay" by brusquely giving orders, avoiding the normal etiquette of "please" and "thank you," etc.

And then, if your screener was trained by Joseph Cioffi, it might be just due to old habit.

*****

*****

The last paragraph says exactly that, you're just confused by multi-syllabic words.