really? so, when your wife says she never has been in an earthquake and thousands of strangers say they’ve experienced one, you’ll believe her(and claim earthquakes don’t exist)?
'cause that’s what you’re doing here. Because your wife’s experience contradicts others experiences, you’re questioning theirs.
there are thousands and thousands of TSAs
your wife is merely one of them. we don’t disbelieve that your wife is a fine TSA We believe that there are TSAs who aren’t.
I actually agree with Una’s post about flight attendant attitude. I fly 6-10 times per year round-trip (so 12-20 legs, generally)
I almost always fly one of three airlines- Southwest, American or JetBlue. Southwest employees used to be the nicest in the air. They laughed, joked around (even during the announcements from the cockpit) and were generally very friendly folks. But sadly, they seem to have become “institutionalized” for the most part, and now seem quite cranky and unhelpful at least half the time.
American is a legacy carrier, and it shows. Their stews seemed to have been screwed over by the industry and their parent corp again and again, and they are generally unfriendly, if not downright rude. Now that we fly with our kids, we rarely fly business class anymore, so we are stuck in coach, and frankly it appears that the stews don’t want to be there any more than I do. Don’t ask for something to eat or drink, even for a child, unless they are in the act of passing it out, or you will get a freezing denial and no service for the rest of the flight.
JetBue is still consistently a wonderful airline to fly. The cabin crews are friendly and helpful, the snacks are better (!) and it is almost always an enjoyable flight.
We will be back in first class on American for a trip with the kids this summer, and believe me- if the service sucks, you will hear about it! The Hawa’ii run is staffed by old-timers with at least 20 years in (at least that used to be the case), so it will either be gals who know their stuff, or gals who are even more pissed off than usual. I will be comparing the first class service on the Hawa’ii run to a trip in 1994, where the servce was outstanding.
If my wife says there was no earthquake, and a single stranger on the internet who I don’t know insists that they were there and they felt an earthquake, then if I care to form an opinion, it’s going to be that my wife is correct. Sure.
There aren’t thousands of people here saying the TSA are regularly cruel to passengers. There are a few saying this, and a few saying otherwise, and a few saying they sometimes are but usually aren’t. And my wife has made no claim one way or the other about whether TSAs in general are cruel to passengers. Rather, over the course of several years I’ve gotten a picture of what it’s like being a TSA from her reported experiences and those of other TSAs. Furthermore, I have adduced more general considerations about the nature of humans and of people working in jobs that require a lot of interaction with customers, that have nothing to do with my wife or the TSA. The analogy you’ve drawn, then, is a very weak one.
-FrL-
Sadly, the TSA is not notorious for friendly, helpful, intelligent people calmly and professionally enforcing clear, unambiguous, easily explained regulations.
your wife’s experiences are her own, if you then attempt to universalize them, you get into trouble.
Her experiences come from her location. In my earthquake example - apparently I did not make it clear enough for you. Your wife, in your location, feels no earthquake. A stranger in another location feels one. If you take wife’s word over the other person’s your an idiot. Hell, even if they’re in the same location - her experiences are not universal (there was an earthquake -very mild- in my area once, I felt it since I was leaning against a wall at the time, others did not feel it).
as for the number ‘thousands’ I’m confident that there are at least that number, but will admit that I didn’t reasearch it. Going on the basic number of interactions on a daily basis, I"d be surprised if there weren’t thousands of incidents. I’ve only flown maybe 4 times in the past 5 years, and on one of those trips came across a needlessly nasty, rude fuck as a TSA. so my experience tells me that 1/4 ofthe time you’ll come against an asshole.
But I won’t try and extrapolate my personal experience to make a universal prediction.
WTF is behind your Crusade in favor of TSA, Fry? STM you are taking it awfully personal as if this whole thread was direct criticism of your (surely) lovely bride. But, case in point, it isn’t. Many of us have shared (at no personal benefit as someone mentioned upthread – and perhaps as yet another strike against us, as it appears confidentiality is going the way of the dinosaurs these days) our true to life experiences while going through your customs security requirements. And on the whole (saintly wife excluded of course) they haven’t, for the most part, been anything but pleasant.
Simple experiment, fly over a few times to the EU and see how you get treated there as opposed to the way the US handles its visitors and nationals.
Hell, I fly into Spain and the most I get is a cursury look at my passport pic and my live mug and cheery “welcome home, Sir.” They don’t even bother to stamp the thing. And on the way out a simple walk-though by the metal detectors. In my last seven or eight visits I was stopped ONCE – turns out I didn’t empty my pockets correctly and had some keys in them. End result: we all had a laugh…including “terrarist” jokes.
But never you mind, keep thinking the TSA (and the whole fucking mess that are US airports now a days) is represented by your flawless wife. The rest of us are clearly fibbing. As in I’ve never had my balls grabbed by some surly TSA motherfuckers nor my insoles torn by some TSA bitch. At least four times in my last eight trips – the cojones grabbing part anyway.
See, I’m just writing it here because subconsciously I like it so much that I just want them to keep on doing it to me. I simply love it when some Deliverance-looking MF wants to cop a feel. I mean don’t we all?
Fuck you very much, asswipe.
Thanks for the clarification, but the analogy is still not a good one, mostly for the same reasons. It completely fails to capture the structure of my argument.
I am not generalizing from one person’s experience. Rather, I have adduced considerations having to do with human nature, the trouble-avoiding, just-make–it-to-the-next-break nature of people’s behavior in “customer service” type positions in general (i.e. without reference to my wife or the TSA), as well as long familiarity with the experiences of those TSAs (including my wife) that I do know.
In the earthquake case, there is no reason to think my wife’s earthquake judgments here would have anything to do with the question whether an earthquake happened somewhere else. But this is not quite true in the TSA case. There are plenty of reason to think my wife’s (and her coworkers’) experiences are typical. Some generalization is licensed. But let me reiterate (as I did in the above paragraph, and as I have done several times already in this thread) that such a generalization is not the basic structure of my argument. (Though it is part of it.)
And I’ll repeat something else. I am not claiming TSAs are generally nice and polite. (It happens to be the case that I do think TSAs are generally polite when on the job, but that’s not related to the claim I’ve been arguing for here.) Rather, my claim is that the kind of thing related in the OP isn’t the kind of thing that is funny in their work environment. Here is what I mean by that. My wife and I happened to have lunch with a couple of TSAs today. We were talking about this thread. Stories about rude TSAs, being short or smartalec with passengers, brought reactions along the lines of “That’s bad behavior for a TSA. Stress will do that to you.” But the idea of the TSAs laughing at this lady instead brought a reaction more akin to “That’s… weird.” (These) TSAs easily recognize the temptation to be rude. But the idea of laughing at the situation described in the OP didn’t strike them as bad TSA behavior, it struck them, rather, as nonsense. Like saying someone laughed at a cheesecake. Its like a category error. My claim is that this reflects the typical attitude.
And let me repeat something else. Though I started the thread using the language of inconcievability, I have long since acknowledged this is an exaggeration. I’m sure some pair of TSAs somewhere are happy to by psychopaths together. This brings out another point about the structure of my argument that people are missing. I am claiming it is much more likely that the woman is mistaken than that TSAs were laughing at her. Again, I make this claim based on what is generally known about alot of things, not just based on what I know about TSAs. Generally, people don’t laugh about this kind of thing. Generally, people in this kind of position feel vulnerable. Generally, people in jobs that involve a lot of interactio with customers try their best to keep on a poker face and just last through to their next break without incident. It is very common for people who are accusing someone of something to want to see that someone, and to want that someone to be seen, in as bad a light as possible. Put these general facts together, and it becomes very plausible to say the following: The majority of reports of customer service types openly laughing at customers are probably false reports, whether because of a misunderstanding or whatever. There are probably some true reports as well, but the majority of reports are probably false. Therefore any report would require corroboration.
Then I add in what I know about TSAs, and the likelihood goes down even further.
I feel like I had one more point to make.
-FrL-
Meh, I just think people are making an error which matters, and I think I’m in a position to have something to say to help correct it.
I know everybody knows my wife is neat-o. 
See my immediately preceding post for an attempt to pull it all together.
I got confused. Did you mean “saintly wife included” or “anything but unpleasant?”
It seems to me that the question of the appropriateness of the procedures in different countries is (a very valid and) separate issue than the one being discussed in this thread.
Your characterization of my position directly contradicts my position.
-FrL-
Frylock, you have continued to be polite, civil and reasonable during this whole discussion, and don’t think some of us haven’t noticed.
For me, it’s just too easy for me to poke the TSA with a stick and tease it, instead of admitting that there might be a few good apples in the bunch. I even believe that the system turns normal people into assholes, by it’s very nature.
But I’m going to try and moderate myself and my posts, and thank you for the way you have conducted yourself. It stands out.
Thanks, and please don’t read any of my other posts in Pit threads. 
Actually, I think there’s some truth to this. Like I said, part of the reason my wife quit was because it was getting harder and harder to be nice to people on the job.
I myself had a job once which had this effect, (telephone surveys,) so I know how it goes.
-FrL-
Polite and civil, yes.
On the other hand, “reasonable” went out the window like two pages ago.
I don’t think we’re communicating here.
I will say this - the TSA have much improved each year. This last year they have acted the most polite and professional yet. I think things were especially bad until about mid-late 2003; from 9/11 to about then was when about 80% of the things I listed above happened.
RedFury does make a good point. I travel internationally a lot, and most places in the world, even in places like the former East Bloc, I get polite, understanding attention from security. The UK can be bad once in a while. A customs agent barked at me in Poland, but I think that was just his shtick. In Taiwan for some unknown reason they pulled the ends off of each of my syringes and touched the needles with their gloved hands. So I had to throw away all my insulin syringes, and rely on my backups. What on earth would cause a person to touch the needles of sterile syringes? That’s like some sort of mental illness at work.
However, in Japan, even though I had full bag searches every time I went through, the security personnel were so…polite, I felt like apologizing to them for putting them through the inconvenience of having to search my bags. The whole attitude of their security was “I am deeply sorry that I must offend you for searching your bags. Please don’t hold it against me. I would rather me doing anything other than invading your personal property. I’m so very, very sorry.”
If you won’t believe my experiences of poor treatment by flight staff, then I won’t bother to post anything more.
I wouldn’t buy that for one hot second if Einstein himself rose from the grave and wrote it in a letter to me.
Seconded. Please take that shit somewhere else. The Supreme Court assigned President Bush to the post, and any attempt to lay that shit on us American Dopers–most of whom would probably rather have a chimp for president than him–is a bald-faced lie and an insult.
RedFury, those stories are nearly horrifying. The Iron Curtain analogy seems particularly apt. It’s like Soviet Russia in there. Is that really warranted?
Oh, come on. You’re really reaching now. And it’s only gotten worse since you made this post.
Frylock: it’s possible that this woman heard laughing and assumed it was directed at her when it really wasn’t.
But your insistence that laughing at passengers is simply “not done” by the TSA is ridiculous. All professions have persons within them who laugh at one inappropriate time or another. Nobody is “above” it. You’re living in fantasyland if you think the TSA is the one group that is somehow able to permanently maintain professional decorum when it comes to inappropriate laughter, especially when you have already said they’re not above acting unprofessionally in other areas, such as by being rude.
I’ve had plenty of good (or rather neutral) TSA experiences and I’ve had some of the snottiest, stupidest, most asshole-ish service people I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. I’ve had one gleefully snicker at me while making me wait on the side while he let 40 people go ahead of me. And I wasn’t imagining his grinning smirk while he repeatedly said, “No, YOU can stand there and wait,” when I asked to please be let through, since I could see him standing right in front of me. That you believe no TSA employee could ever be a dick and demonstrate that dickishness by laughing at someone is baffling to me.
Thank for the discussion, everyone. Post 147 is probably going to be my last word on the subject. Please do read it, as it may serve to prevent several of the mischaracterizations of my position that have occured in recent posts. (Such as that I think it’s impossible that the woman was laughed at, or that I think all TSAs are perfectly kind and polite, or that I think it makes sense to generalize from one experience to all instances, in all contexts.)
-FrL-
This being The Dope, I agree that no one should take another poster’s anecdotal experience as fact. But when you combine the cumulative experiences described here with a simple Google search on TSA abuses, it boggles the mind that someone can be so thick-headed as to keep repeating, mantra-like, “that simply can’t be true!”
Well, it fucking very much is the current state of affairs in US airports – as it’s also a fact (Which should make Frylock rather proud) that the abuses appear to be quite nondiscriminatory. IOW, beyond what appear to be The Usual Suspects such as myself, just about anyone can expect a TSA Inquisition…just because they can.
To wit: TSA is as unpopular as the IRS
Then again, no doubt that man made the whole thing up.
Hostile Dialect, warranted? Read these and then you can tell me if you think it is:
“Dominate. Intimidate. Control.”
Inside Job: My Life as an Airport Screener
As for why I am picked-on in particular, I have no idea. Only place I really let my political views known is The Dope – and despite my obvious opposition to Bush reign I am sure I’ve never advocated any kind terrorist action of any type. As I said many times before, I love the US and consider it my second home.
Lastly and a bit off topic, I can also confirm the incredible downturn in passenger services in the past 15 to 20 years. Unless you can afford a First class/Business ticket every time you fly, expect to be treated like a cattle call by most airlines – though I have heard good things about some of the Asian ones, I can’t vouch for them as I have no personal experience with any of them.
AA? Atrocious. As is Iberia’s BTW.
I’m another one who’s received seriously inconsistent treatment from TSA employees. I had a knee replacement a year ago, and immediately prior to the surgery was in serious pain if I stood for any length of time. So what did the TSA bitch at BWI AIrport make me do? Stand up out of the wheelchair I was being pushed through security in, for several minutes, while taking away the cane I was using as a prop. At the New Orleans airport on the way home, they provided me with an all-wood cane they keep at security for just such purposes, and told me that all stations are required to have one. So where was the one at BWI? And what was the point of making me stand there except to cause me (literal) pain? Which, by the way, I was informing them of and begging to be allowed to sit down or at least have something to lean on. While being either ignored or told “We’ll be with you in a minute.” I was in tears before they would let me sit down. Maybe I should have just fallen down on the floor to prove my point, except I’m not sure I could have gotten up by myself again. Oh, and my husband was standing off to the side also asking loudly for me to be allowed to sit or be given a cane, to no effect also.
You’ll never convince me there aren’t sadistic, petty bastards working for TSA. Lucky me, at least I can stand now, which is good since my handy-dandy card saying I have the knee replacement gets 100% ignored. Whereas my Canadian friend, who has a hip replacement, flies in Canada and the UK with nothing more than a letter from her doctor.
I will also add that in my work, I’ve transcribed hearings involving TSA employees at more than one airport, and the tales they tell of the goings-on in the baggage search areas would curl your hair. They’re not just being sadistic and petty to us, some of the supervisors are doing it to their own employees. As well as multiple instances of blatant racism and sexism. It’s a really appalling mess of an agency.
The TSA are thugs, and the security restrictions put in place are ridiculous security theatre. Add in the rules, which change from day to day, station to station, and airport to airport which are a joke at best and an actual hole in security at worst.
Combine that with the shit they call customer service on anything less than business class seats, the intolerable rudeness at all levels of customer service from start to finish during airport travel, the incompetence of airports in getting luggage from point a to point b without loss, theft, or delay, and it’s reached the point where flying, much less flying to the US, is a nightmare that I dread rather than an experience I used to quite enjoy.
I avoid flying to the US anymore especially, and it’s all down to the petty tyrants in the TSA who seem to believe the myth that they’re the front line in the war on terror and actually of benefit to anyone except the government attempting to reduce unemployment for half-wits who couldn’t find work at the mall.
Well at least this woman didn’t have to pull out the surgically-implanted medical device repairing an anal fissure because security said it was suspicious. They got a doctor after they failed to yank it out themselves!
:eek: That will give me nightmares.
Has anyone tried to figure out how much money the US is losing on tourism due to the constant stream of bad press caused by TSA agents?