For the hurried traveler, encountering the TSA security lines can sometimes feel like a flashback to grade school confusion. I’ll explain.
Remember the days of waking up and fighting with your parents about not wanting to go to school? Some of you may be having those very same arguments with your kids right now. Without fail, the daily dialogue always ended with a phrase that went something like this, “You don’t get to choose whether you go to school, it’s the law.”
Even for the child who enjoyed going to school, the notion that you had no choice in the matter was confusing and frustrating.
As I watch the security lines in our airports, I wonder whether we are approaching them with the same youthful confusion and frustration. Are we spending too much mental energy on “why do we have to do this”?
We know the experience from our end, but do we ever appreciate the view from the other side? Recently I spent five minutes chatting with a TSA worker about the experience from their perspective. This is what was shared with me (by a very nice woman):
* “It gets frustrating because people don’t seem to understand or respect that we have a job to do and that we don’t make the rules.”
* “90% of the people coming through the lines are actually pretty good, but the 10 percent that are bad, they are really, really not very nice.”
* “It’s interesting to watch people move through the process because they often just follow the person in front of them – without thinking very much.”
Perhaps it would do us all some good if we were able to release the need to fight the system with those that don’t create the structure. If the person behind us is going to follow what we do, maybe we should start with gratitude and compassion.
After all, we can still have a nap time on the plane.
Jason Barger is author of Step Back from the Baggage Claim: Change the World, Start at the Airport
Jason Barger spent seven straight days flying 6,458 miles to seven different cities – without leaving the airports the entire time. He studied 10,000 minutes of observations at all four corners of the U.S. and reflected on how our airport experiences can teach us about our lives TODAY. The funny and inspiring stories remind us how to change our daily world in our personal lives, businesses, schools, and faith communities! Join the movement. All four editions of Step Back from the Baggage Claim are motivational books perfect for anyone looking to impact change in their life and work.
I’d love to just follow the person in front of me. But given that I use a wheelchair, that won’t work. I have enormous respect for most of the TSA agents. However, a few of them need a little extra training on how to handle people with disabilities coming through the line. And I really wish they would realize that I have no issues with it taking a little longer, I only start to have issues when they want me to leave my laptop unattended and out of my line of sight for the 10 minutes it takes them to actually screen me,
Recently I spent five minutes chatting with a TSA worker about the experience from their perspective. This is what was shared with me (by a very nice woman):
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Ok, here is your next assignment. Stand behind a flight attendant at the entrance door during a delay and watch the passengers board and interact with the flight attendant. You’d be amazed.
You have a good point. It is entirely futile and counterproductive to take out our frustrations about TSA “security” on the people at the lowest level of the hierarchy. They can only enforce the rules, and have no more say in making the rules than the passengers they poke and prod.
TSA screening is one of those frequent situations over which we have absolutely no control. So ideally we should just placidly accept it and endure it with a cheerful smile. While going through screening, we should replace any thoughts about “inconvenience” and “stupidity” with either reassurance that the hard-working screeners are doing everything they can to protect us from a horrible threat, or with gratitude about the near-miracle of air travel of which is is an unavoidable part. Then completely forget about it once it’s over.
That, of course, is a counsel of perfection that I suspect rather few of us are actually capable of implementing when we get to the checkpoint. The TSA screeners you talked to may have valid complaints about passengers just following the herd “without thinking very much.” But that may not be the passengers’ fault. TSA checkpoints really are about herding people just like sheep or cattle, and treating them like disobedient little children (and/or prisoners). And the TSA themselves encourage unquestioning obedience rather than thinking. Their web page describing the convolutions of the War on Liquids even says that we should “follow the guidelines… and try not to over-think these guidelines.”.
One of the continuing major frustrations of TSA screening is that their “workers” implement the rules inconsistently, and too often “without thinking very much.” It’s a classic “negative feedback loop,” where the inherent frustrations of the TSA’s process engender “confusion and frustration” along with resentment, which makes the experience unpleasant for everyone concerned. Your counsel of perfection about placidly and gratefully accepting what we can’t control could indeed help to break the cycle if enough people could find the wherewithal to practice it. There is nothing we can do about the TSA, so the only thing we can do is to control how we react to it.
But it still doesn’t solve the problem of TSA practices that are needlessly frustrating and questionably effective. When we have to endure an increasingly intrusive and frustrating process of which so much is unfathomable, citizens of a free society are justified in spending at least some “mental energy” on “why do we have to do this”? But directing it at the people at the checkpoints does nothing. It would be more appropriate (if not necessarily more effective, unfortunately) to direct it toward our elected representatives. Much of the problem with the TSA is that their role in the “Global War On Terror” apparently grants them an exemption from the oversight and accountability to which every other government agency is subject. They need to be held accountable for ensuring that the frustration and clearly visible stupidity are necessary and effective.
Placid, unquestioning acceptance may be the healthiest approach for passengers at TSA checkpoints interacting with low-level “workers” who don’t make the rules. But when we’re not at the airport, healthy democracy requires that we indeed expend some “mental energy” on demanding accountability from the officials who do make the rules.
It would be very helpful (which of course is not in the TSA employee handbook) if they would post the “rules” for going through security in clear, legible, large letters by the checkpoints. For instance, does it say anywhere that you need to take off your shoes prior to going through the metal detector? How about taking your laptop computer out? And what about belts and watches – do those need to be removed or not? Jackets need to be taken off – but does it say that anywhere? In the past, you had to have your boarding pass out, now you don’t. Does it say that anywhere? I could go on and on, but I think everyone gets the point. Just tell us what you expect, and 99.99% of the flying public will comply. The 0.01% who don’t should be beaten with a rubber hose.
Why doesn’t the TSA spend 5 minutes with frequent flyers – they would learn a lot about how to streamline the process.
Frank – what would be amazing about the interaction with a FA during a delay? Most travelers know the FA is just as big a victim to the delay as the passengers. I’m wondering what you have heard that is so amazing?
On July 16th, 2009 at 1:39 pm Lyngengr said
Frank – what would be amazing about the interaction with a FA during a delay? Most travelers know the FA is just as big a victim to the delay as the passengers. I’m wondering what you have heard that is so amazing?
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What is amazing is that, probably half the aircraft doesnt even acknowledge the Flight Attendant’s greeting. You simply board, stare at the attendant and board. Some of you are on cellphones and consider it proper etiquette to board and simply IGNORE someone who has welcomed you onto the aircraft. You state loudly, how you’re never flying this airline again! Some of you want compensation, as you enter, you say, at least this airline could do, is offer free drinks! Looks of disdain are common too. Every 30 or so passengers boarding actually acknowledge my existence and greet me with mutual respect. I try to mentally remind myself of where they are on the aircraft and return their kindness.
On July 16th, 2009 at 11:14 am Hapgood said You have a good point. It is entirely futile and counterproductive to take out our frustrations about TSA “security” on the people at the lowest level of the hierarchy. They can only enforce the rules, and have no more say in making the rules than the passengers they poke and prod.
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How often are YOU poked and prodded?
Wait- if TSA agents don’t make the rules, why are the ‘rules’ so different airport to airport, TSA person to TSA person? Recently at Austin Tx, a TSA agent reprimanded me severely in front of everyone for not removing my neck scarf. I aksed her (politely) when the rule to remove nexk scarves had changed since I had never been asked to do so before (as a middle age female professional, I travel a GREAT deal and often wear a silk neck scarf). Her reply was that I might be hiding something contraband in it. I stiffled the urge to say “Honey-if I were going to ‘conceal’ contraband, that is hardly the place I would do it”. Not to mention that the scarf wasn’t large enough to conceal anything except mu aging neck skin.
This is one instance of the variability of TSA ‘rules’ I encounter constantly. TSA is a joke…at best…
My husband has found a way to deal with the TSA. He just won’t fly any more. He used to have no problem with it. Even when we go to visit our kids on the opposite coast, he drives. Once a year, I’m on that drive and we sightsee. Unfortunately, he is not seeing traveling to the rest of the world like I am.
I have a problem with the TSA screeners who constantly bark orders at people and worse. I witnessed an LAX TSA agent roughly and physically stop an elderly, hard-of-hearing couple, who didn’t hear her order to the crowd to stop walking.
I will say, that in the past year and a half, I have seen a mellowing of the TSA in general. I am actually greeted with a smile most of the time. The new training is evidently taking effect.