TSA: Total Spazzes & Assholes
Air travel isn’t the fashionable adventure it used to be. Not in the U.S., anyway.
It has a lot to do with airline deregulation (name one airline that isn’t in Chapter 11 bankruptcy) and plunging profit margins. The excitement of flying also suffered on Sept. 11, 2001.
Because after four aircraft came tumbling from the skies at the hands of terrorists, we became ultra-anal about security.
No more pocket knives on planes (the terrorists, it is known, used box cutters). Ditto, for several years, corkscrews, tweezers, small scissors and cuticle removers.
We also came to know the TSA - the Transportation Security Administration.
Also known as Total Spazzes and Assholes.
I’m trying to board a flight from Sacramento to Omaha last week (the reason while this blog isn’t as fresh as it could be) and the TSA is helping to protect me (one minimum wage worker at a time). Think I’m kidding? There’s one person checking boarding passes and I.D.s before we can ride the escalator up to the gates. There are at lease 50 people in line.
Once I’ve proved I’m who I say I am, it’s time to go through the metal detectors; that is, as you remove your shoes, unpack your laptop and send everything through the scanners.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out the shoes thing. We can put two robots on Mars, but we can’t figure out how to tell is someone packed C4 into their Keds?
It’s 4:50 a.m. and the kindly TSA worker is yelling at me.
“That’s going to beep.”
I’m in the process of emptying everything in my pockets into the little bin.
“You’re going to beep”
Shoes into the bin (Why the fuck did I wear my hiking boots?)
“Sir, you’re going to beep.”
“Could you complete your sentence and tell my why,” I said.
“You’re belt, that’s going to beep.”
Off goes my dangerous leather belt. All the while this is going on, the TSA employee on the other side of the detector is trying to wave me through.
“Right this way, let’s go.”
It’s too much, too early in the morning. I’m now half-nekked, hopefully sans metal and I walk through the gate. I’m somewhat scattered.
“Dude, how much do you bench press?” the guy asks.
“I dunno, 325?” (always lie on the side of big).
“That’s what I thought. Here’s you stuff.”
Then it’s on to the cattle cars, or coach class. The 757-300 has room for 243 passengers; only 12 of which will have any sort of room in first class. The rest of us are squeezed three to a row, with two rows running down the length of the plane. I go like 58 inches across the chest; broad shoulders. I feel like mooing.
There’s a big guy in the window seat; I have the aisle (where my shoulder will be smacked numerous times by the stewardess’, who will never say “I’m sorry” or “Excuse me.”)
We cautiously wonder - out loud - is the flight will be full. It is.
A hefty older gal walks up, looks at her ticket, looks at us and says, “Looks like I have a first-class ticket between two hunky guys.”
Before she can make small talk - she and Mr. Window Seat chat the entire time - I slip on my iPod ear buds.
And spend the next hour and 34 minutes with my elbow in this lady’s tits.
Moo.
It has a lot to do with airline deregulation (name one airline that isn’t in Chapter 11 bankruptcy) and plunging profit margins. The excitement of flying also suffered on Sept. 11, 2001.
Because after four aircraft came tumbling from the skies at the hands of terrorists, we became ultra-anal about security.
No more pocket knives on planes (the terrorists, it is known, used box cutters). Ditto, for several years, corkscrews, tweezers, small scissors and cuticle removers.
We also came to know the TSA - the Transportation Security Administration.
Also known as Total Spazzes and Assholes.
I’m trying to board a flight from Sacramento to Omaha last week (the reason while this blog isn’t as fresh as it could be) and the TSA is helping to protect me (one minimum wage worker at a time). Think I’m kidding? There’s one person checking boarding passes and I.D.s before we can ride the escalator up to the gates. There are at lease 50 people in line.
Once I’ve proved I’m who I say I am, it’s time to go through the metal detectors; that is, as you remove your shoes, unpack your laptop and send everything through the scanners.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out the shoes thing. We can put two robots on Mars, but we can’t figure out how to tell is someone packed C4 into their Keds?
It’s 4:50 a.m. and the kindly TSA worker is yelling at me.
“That’s going to beep.”
I’m in the process of emptying everything in my pockets into the little bin.
“You’re going to beep”
Shoes into the bin (Why the fuck did I wear my hiking boots?)
“Sir, you’re going to beep.”
“Could you complete your sentence and tell my why,” I said.
“You’re belt, that’s going to beep.”
Off goes my dangerous leather belt. All the while this is going on, the TSA employee on the other side of the detector is trying to wave me through.
“Right this way, let’s go.”
It’s too much, too early in the morning. I’m now half-nekked, hopefully sans metal and I walk through the gate. I’m somewhat scattered.
“Dude, how much do you bench press?” the guy asks.
“I dunno, 325?” (always lie on the side of big).
“That’s what I thought. Here’s you stuff.”
Then it’s on to the cattle cars, or coach class. The 757-300 has room for 243 passengers; only 12 of which will have any sort of room in first class. The rest of us are squeezed three to a row, with two rows running down the length of the plane. I go like 58 inches across the chest; broad shoulders. I feel like mooing.
There’s a big guy in the window seat; I have the aisle (where my shoulder will be smacked numerous times by the stewardess’, who will never say “I’m sorry” or “Excuse me.”)
We cautiously wonder - out loud - is the flight will be full. It is.
A hefty older gal walks up, looks at her ticket, looks at us and says, “Looks like I have a first-class ticket between two hunky guys.”
Before she can make small talk - she and Mr. Window Seat chat the entire time - I slip on my iPod ear buds.
And spend the next hour and 34 minutes with my elbow in this lady’s tits.
Moo.
Comments
TSA workers are a bunch of f'ing stupid assholes. There was an expose done in Traveler magazine in 2006, in which an investigative reporter went undercover as a Total Spazz & Asshole employee. She indicated that none of her references were ever contacted before she was given the job and her "physical" examination consisted of some bureaucratic moron asking her over the phone to lift her arms and indicate if it hurts.
So tell me Anonymous TSA butt licker, do you want those Total Spazzes & Assholes rifling through your possessions when no one at their agency bothered to do a reference check?
Also Anonymous TSA butt-licker, seven years after 9/11, the Total Spazzes & Asshole Administration is now finally checking for fake ID's, which means that for the first seven years after 9/11; people may have been boarding planes with fake id's. Do you really feel safe butt head?
I do not mind TSA or security at airports, I hope however they recruit and train relatively intelligent agent wile filtering the mediocre and obtuse.
In short, I blame the leaders – the saying in business goes line workers mediocrity reflects the incompetence and Leaders or Managers.
Anonymous sounds like one of these hand-wringing hysterical pussies. The airlines, if they had the sense of a half-dozen subgrade morons that compose a TSA screen, should offer non-security flights at a premium: the airlines might finally be able to make a profit as these tickets would sell like gangbusters.
I'd never fly any other way, since this incident has proved the TSA morons aren't worth their paychecks.
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20150728-garland-man-without-ticket-id-bypasses-security-at-dfw-to-board-flight.ece