TSA

After months of travel over several years in countless countries, I have come to one singular conclusion regarding airports: TSA is the epitome of inefficiency. Not only on the large scale/giant-arm-of-the-Homeland-Security-beast/evil bastards kinda way... but also on the most simplest and basic of terms.

Now before you get all huffy, I'm not talking about the employees. I'm sure many of you are very nice people with families and all and you're probably an alright person when you're not at work. But the redundancy of your positions are baffling.

Why are the three people at the x-ray scanner unable to touch a bag? Why do you need to call over a bag handler (especially when they're both so obviously busy harassing an elderly lady about the yogurt she forgot in her carry-on)? Would it kill you to get up from your chair and peek to make sure that dildo-shaped object in the Louis Vuitton sitting in the the microwaved suitcase isn't a bomb.

They might as well just have it a mandatory requirement that your bag must be open when you go through security. You must be naked, carrying nothing in your hands, and all your electronics are turned completely off. If you cannot follow these simple rules, a TSA agent is legally authorized to shoot you. Problem solved. The lines would move like quicksilver, I tell ya.

Also: if you're going to insist that passengers check in two hours early, ya GOTTA let us smokers smoke. I'm all for making sure my bad habits don't affect others, so stuff me in a human anchovy can. Go ahead! So long as it has an ashtray, I'm good. But expecting us smokers to remain calm while standing in a line for twenty minutes while the fifty people in front of us cant figure out that liquids must be in a ziplock baggie and, no, you can't wear your big metal cross through the metal detector (dumbass) is like putting a rotting carcass in front of a hungry lion. He's gonna go crazy and eat the fucking thing. Otherwise everything around him is going to start looking like dinner.

Favorite frustration today? Line I'm in is moving super slow, right? It's old folks. Okay. Totally understandable. I'm patient. I can wait it out. Take your time, pops. Then...

TSA agent 1 says, "Looks like the other line is moving along folks, so go ahead and move on over!

(An audible grumble is heard from a guy getting his boarding pass checked who was just about to get in that line)

(the new line piles up. I stay where I am because I am a rock in a flowing stream in a beautiful forest, maaaan. I gots all the time in the world)

A few minutes later, I hear a loud, commanding voice of TSA agent 2, who calls out, "IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH THE FULL BODY SCANNER, THIS IS NOT THE LINE FOR YOU! Please return to the other line! Again, if you do not want to be pat down, please return to the other line!

(Many grumbles issue from the exodus line and from the line behind me which just moved up to fill the vacuum they left when they betrayed our trust. Selfish bastards. Several of them turn around and try to figure out where they should go and, in the chaos, they form a third, "rogue nation" line. Many more grumbles, much louder now from all around)

And I say, "Go that way! No! That way! Wait! I meant the other way! Oh, nevermind, just stay where you are!"

I suppose I probably deserved that pat down. Still...

There have been numerous articles about the inefficiency of TSA, it's outdated modes and measurements of "security", it's ridiculous standards and redundancies, it's massive hemorrhaging budget, and it's ultimate inability to protect jack from shit. They are a lumbering giant that's gone mad from the strain of holding a finger in a dike in hopes of keeping the terror from flooding in. Why someone hasn't fixed the hole yet baffles me
but, hey, that's what we got. So we just all deal with it.

Tangentially:

When I was in Fiji, the security desk was a scanner, an attendant, and two men in military uniforms carrying MP5s. The line moved fine but then there was a lady with an American accent who was stopped because she had two bottles of booze in her bag and security wouldn't let her through because of their policy regarding excessive amounts of flammable liquids on the plane. Sounds reasonable to me. This lady starts arguing loudly with the attendant. Others are also being stopped for the bottles of booze they just bought in duty-free. She says to the line of impatient people watching this debacle unfold while,standing in 200% humidity 100 degree weather in a shit hole airport in Fiji, "People! We need to come together! This isn't right!"

And I said,

"Lady, those guys over there are carrying machine guns and you're trying to rally a line of people who just want to get on the plane to unite for $50 of Jack Daniels? Move the #$%* along, already!"

Even then, the guys with the machine guns were cool, calm, efficient, even friendly. They stood there until she sheepishly replaced her shit back in her bags, sans booze.

This type of efficiency is mirrored in every other airport I've been. I've been all over the world and no airport is worse than a United States airport.

Look, I get it. 9/11 told us that if we'd had better security at our airports maybe the terrorists wouldn't have hurt us so badly. But here's a crazier idea. Maybe if we hadn't fucked over another country, they wouldn't have bred extremists who decided we were worth hurting. Maybe these extreme and disturbed people - in their inarticulate rage and hatred and determination to hurt us - would have found another way to attack us and, instead of shitty service at airports, it would be shitty service at train stations or ferry lines or at stadiums. Maybe the Homeland Security agency would be making life miserable for people heading to the supermarket, letting ten checkout clerks all try and get your groceries rung up and bagged and put in the cart and asking if you need help out today while being rude as fuck. Who knows? Not me.

But I do know that US airport security is a joke. A big, old, hot mess of a joke with no punch line and no delivery and no point.

And I, for one, am not laughing.

-D@N
9 June 2012
PDX, OR