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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDear America, I Saw You Naked: And yes, we were laughing. Confessions of an ex-TSA agent.
This is a fucking GREAT read:
" Most TSA officers I talked to told me they felt the agencys day-to-day operations represented an abuse of public trust and funds."
On Jan. 4, 2010, when my boss saw my letter to the editor in the New York Times, we had a little chat.
<gaping snip>
My pained relationship with government security had started three years earlier. I had just returned to Chicago to finish my bachelors degree after a two-year stint in Florida. I needed a job to help pay my way through school, and the TSAs call-back was the first one I received. It was just a temporary thing, I told myselfside income for a year or two as I worked toward a degree in creative writing. It wasnt like a recession would come along and lock me into the job or anything.
It was May 2007. I was living with a bohemian set on Chicagos north side, a crowd ranging from Foucault-fixated college kids to middle-aged Bukowski-bred alcoholics. We drank and talked politics on the balcony in the evenings, pausing only to sneer at hipsters strumming back-porch Beatles sing-a-longs. By night, I took part in barbed criticism of U.S foreign policy; by day, I spent eight hours at OHare in a federal uniform, solemnly carrying out orders passed down from headquarters.
I hated it from the beginning. It was a job that had me patting down the crotches of children, the elderly and even infants as part of the post-9/11 airport security show. I confiscated jars of homemade apple butter on the pretense that they could pose threats to national security. I was even required to confiscate nail clippers from airline pilotsthe implied logic being that pilots could use the nail clippers to hijack the very planes they were flying.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-confession-102912.html#ixzz2s13grp44
Glossary of terms used by TSA employees:
What Those TSA Guys Are Really Saying
Definitions in The Insiders TSA Dictionary taken from James Harringtons blog, Taking Sense Away.
10-100: Originally, CB radio lingo for a bathroom break. This is what some TSA officers say when theyre tired of their co-workers.
Alfalfa: TSA malespeak for an attractive female passenger.
Baby-shower-opt-out: When a woman opts out of the full body scanner and accidentally lets slip the explanation: I dont want to go through the scanner. Im pregnant, evoking a shriek from her fellow traveling companions, Why didnt you tell us, Becky? OH EM GEE!? A mini celebration then takes place right there in the line. It is one of the few heartwarming things that ever come about due to the full body scanners.
BBC: Bogus Bag Check, or Bullshit Bag Check. What happens when a not-too-bright x-ray operator decides to call a bag search.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/tsa-screener-confession-102912.html#ixzz2s13vpNUi
Stargazer09
(2,131 posts)I hated those scanners. It is nice to know that at least some of the TSA agents hated them, too.