This weekend I flew back and forth from Cincinnati to Milwaukee. In one airport (I don’t remember which), the area just past the security screeners, where you try to reclaim whatever is left of your dignity, had an unusal sign hanging above it. It was a large sign that looked like all the other official signs in the airport – big hunk of metal hanging from the ceiling, brown background, white block letters, and so on. Only, the sign said “RECOMBOBULATION AREA”. The hell? I thought it was kind of amusing. But, this is the TSA. They’re not known as a merry band of pranksters. So, my amusement turned to confusement. Is “recombobulation” making a push for the ranks of standard usage? Or was the TSA just showing their little-known whimsical side? Anybody else ever see the TSA trying to be funny?
You forgot to explain what the ‘TSA’ is to the non-Americans on this board.
‘Recombobulation’ has got to be a joke word (there isn’t a definition at dictionary.com), so either the TSA has had a joke played on them, or the TSA are indeed playing a joke themselves (or, uncontemplatably - ‘recombobulation’ has become a serious and meaningful word)
The TSA are “Those Stupid Assholes” who refer to themselves as the Transportation Security Administration. Basically, they do nothing but make air travel less convenient for everyone.
Not true. I believe they also make it more expensive, if indirectly.
Nice touch with the sign, though. I’d appreciate it more if the honesty policy stretched to signs reading “QUEUE HERE TO BE TREATED LIKE SHIT”, “PRIORITY LINE FOR BEARDY FOREIGN GENTLEMEN”, “NEXT YEAR WHY NOT TAKE A VACATION AT HOME, ASSHOLES?”, etc…
D’oh, sorry. I see Q.E.D. has chipped in the answer. I prefer “Thousands Standing Around”, but “Those Stupid Assholes” is also a good option if you don’t want to use the more official “Transportation Security Administration”. The TSA folks, at least in Cincy, are generally friendly and seem to make the best of the situation. But, I’m just having a hard time believing they had a joke sign made up for the hell of it.
I’ve actually seen this sign before fairly recently (and I haven’t been to Cincy or Milwaukee recently), so it might be a TSA thing, not just something local.
Maybe you should try walking up to a TSA official and talk to one about it.
“Excuse me, I seem to be out of sorts. Where can I go to get recombobulated?”
“I’d like to file a complaint. Yesterday I patronized your recombobulation area, and I have to say it was just about the most incompetent recombobulation I’ve ever had. I have seriously never been so ineptly recombobulated in all my life. Who is the manager here? I think he needs to have a word with his recombobulators, because someone needs to be fired.”
“I’d like a recombobulation, please. Extra whip.”
It’s a word - it’s what you do after you’ve become discombobulated.
All the Google hits on ‘recombobulation’ are coming up with World of Warcraft links, something about an operation. 
That’s probably the Recombobulator. 
It gets you un-discombobulated!
Yeah, I was finding the same thing. And “recombobulation area” in quotes finds a whopping 0 hits.
You’d think a government agency could come up with something less snappy, like “Post Individual Security Search Organizational Facilitation Facility”.
'Course, they’d probably want to turn it into an initialism.
There’s something similar at BWI but it didn’t say “Recombobulation”, but rather “recomposition” or something similar in meaning but lacking the humor of the OP.
Nah, you’ll know the TSA has a sense of humor when you ‘Resume joking’ signs as you leave the airport.
Huh. None of the airports I’ve been in have a sign…just a buncha chairs over to one side. I think someone, whether TSA or the individual airport’s staff, does have a sense of humor.
There’s a quest in World of Warcraft (a low-level dwarf/gnome area quest) to kill irradiated gnomes to get parts for a Recombobulator Mechanism. It’s called “Operation Recombobulation”, like a Mission: Impossible episode.
My bold.
I have noticed that the TSA is staffed disproportionately by older, slightly shriveled men. And, with all the x-raying going on… Hmmmm.
I always thought TSA meant Trained Search Apes.
I guess I am too kind.