I got felt up by the TSA....

I used to work for TSA. I did that crap for four years when it first started. It was the most miserable four years of my life. It's been over 4 years since I quit to become a tattoo artist, but lemme share some memories...

I signed on when it first started, when airport security first went federal. Then, it was a new organization and management was made up mostly of former airline employees who had never managed other people before and had no business managing. At Ft. lauderdale, the majority of management were egotistical, on some kind of high horse, holier-than-thou people who were only concerned with how good they looked. Morale in that place was horrendous. There were so many constant changes to the SOP that they were always debating on what to do in what situation and who was right. Employees were doing something they were told to do by one manager and then another manager would write them up because they said it was wrong. I was constantly being written up because management didn't communicate with each other and because of some uniform violation or another. Every time there was a new manager I'd get written up for my ears. "The uniform policy says you can only have 1/4" earrings. Yours are 3/4". You have to take those out." So I'd take them out and without the jewelry, flesh tunnels kind of look like a puckered asshole in your earlobe. Not very pretty. And they'd say, "Oh my gosh, you have a hole in your head." No shit, what did you think it was? There was one time I even got written up for wearing a black bra that they could KIND OF see through my uniform shirt. Discrimination and favoritism were constants, and you were promoted not for how well you knew how to do your job, but for how well you kissed ass. I do not kiss ass very well.

To name a couple ridiculous situations... there was one time an editor of a certain porn magazine was flying through. He lived in West palm, so he flew through our airport kind of regularly. A bunch of us were on break sitting at one of the gates and we got to talking to this guy about his job. There were I think 4 male and 2 female employees. He pulled out some photographs to show us the model that was going to be in the next issue of his magazine. This guy TOLD US two girls that we didn't have to look, we might get offended. I didn't mind. (Shit, I wanted to see more.) The model was topless but she was wearing a bikini bottom. Nothing to gawk at. Well, this other female that was on break with us, after doing her lipstick and eyeliner and and flipping her blonde hair a dozen times, she blew it WAY out of proportion and went and told management that we were all down there looking at porno with this guy and he was harassing her by showing her porn. The guy missed his flight and was questioned by police. All of us employees got in trouble, even if 6 of us had a different story than she did. She played victim and within another month, she was promoted. Personally, I think she was sucking someone off in the office... It was just a situation that could have been handled a hell of a lot differently.

Another situation was when i was working in checked baggage. A couple times a year they have a cooler and box embargo to Haiti. No coolers or boxes, doesn't matter what's in them. So there was one lady that had a cooler full of meat. Chicken, pork, cow, none of it frozen, none of it in ziplock baggies. They told her she couldn't bring her cooler. The airline sold her a cheap ass duffle bag and she put all this raw, bloody meat in the duffle bag. It was bleeding everywhere as I put it through the x ray machine... of course it alarmed, so I had to go through the whole nasty bag by hand. I got written up for complaining because I had to clean all the blood out of the pod and the x ray machine.

You find some nasty shit in people's bags. The Haitian flight was the worst. Every suitcase over 100 pounds. Every zipper bursting. Every bag loaded with stinking herbs and spices, toothpaste, canned foods, peanut butter, bars of soap and all the crap that makes the x ray machine call for a check. There's really no point in having an x ray machine for that flight, you might as well go through every bag by hand. You find voo doo items, bones, chicken wings or heads, jars or boxes of ashes... and it's routine for lizards or roaches to crawl out of pockets in the bags. I found a turtle once, stuck in there between the layers of clothing. A toad in a shoebox... and I can't even describe to you the SMELL. All the bags smelled the same and I don't even know how to describe it.

The checkpoint was no better. Believe me, screeners don't want to pat you down anymore than you want to be touched, but there are serious repercussions if someone's not being "randomly checked" all the time. Honestly, sometimes we'd pick the nice looking people because they gave us less attitude about being checked. No one likes to be wanded or patted down and though screeners are only doing their jobs, passengers (and especially pilots) take it out on the screeners. I don't want to smell your stinky feet any more than you want to take your shoes off either. All the time we'd get people saying, "My mother is 85 years old, does she look like a terrorist to you?" No, but we took more knives and blades away from old people than anyone else. Old ladies carry steak knives (to slice the apple they brought) more than you'd think. And not that granny's gonna stab you, but what about the guy sitting next to her? What if he takes her steak knife? And maybe granny doesn't look like a terrorist, but if I'm going to blow up a plane, I'm not going to wear a turban. The shoe bomber looked like every other American.

And what about children? Children aren't going to blow up a plane, right? It was always hard when you have to take a child's teddy bear and they start screaming as you try to tell them, "We're just going to take a picture of it with this machine and we'll give it right back..." Well, imagine that poor kid that didn't get his teddy bear back because mom sewed a pound of cocaine in the bear because she didn't think we'd check her kid... True, drugs are not the TSA's priority, but we found a lot of them. And a lot of screeners, myself included, oftentimes pretended we didn't see that little baggie of weed in the bottom of your backpack. But a few times we'd find razorblades, drugs or knives on children or old people because the middle aged folks they were traveling with didn't think we'd check the young or elderly.

Shifts were awful, no matter which one you worked. I used to have to wake up at 2:30 am to get to work on time. I'd have to park in an employee parking lot where the buses that went to the terminals were erratic at best and if you're late by 30 seconds... well you get your ass chewed out and the buses are not an excuse. Leave time was granted based on favoritism. I was not a favorite. There were a select few of us that were picked on constantly. Funny though, it was those select few of us that kept our heads on straight in emergency situations.... like the day a car came in through the front window ....while my supervisor ran away screaming something about a car bomber, me and one other screener were busy helping the few injured people.... there was no fuckin' car bomb. The driver fell asleep and missed the turn...

There was one manager in particular that had a hatred for women and I was her favorite target. She'd tell me "Go set up pod 4." So I'd go start setting up pod 4, running the tests on all the machines, doing all the paperwork and she'd come by 20 minutes (and 2 cigarette breaks later), "Nevermind, shut it down." So I'd do the paper work, shut it down. 10 minutes and another smoke break later, Robin would come by, "Open pod 4." So I'd do the paperwork and the tests AGAIN and 2 smoke breaks later Robin would ask me, "What are you doing?" "Opening pod 4 like you said." "Shut it down." "Can you make up your mind please?" Ooops. Kris got written up again.

In another incident, I'm at the checkpoint sitting on the Xray machine and a gun comes through the xray. You never see guns on the xray. Or, you're not SUPPOSED to. Anyone who's authorized to carry them has credentials and walks through the exit lane. So I'm supposed to tell the manager, who's supposed to tell the police officer. Well guess what, the manager, Robin, was on a fucking smoke break. There's always supposed to be a manager in the checkpoint. She left her post. Technically, she's supposed to get in trouble for that. But no, I got written up for insubordination because I went right to the police officer instead of up the chain of command.

Those are just a few examples. It was just a poorly run operation and the guys in Washington that make the rules aren't there, they don't actually see what works and what doesn't. The screeners get all the crap from the passengers AND the managers. There were maybe TWO supervisors out of TEN who knew their job and didn't harass us, and didn't make morale as shitty as a backed up septic tank.

I've noticed a lot of people getting pissed off about new security screening measures and the word "invasive" has been used a lot, so I've been trying to share my experiences a lot, even if they're outdated. I'm sure the majority of TSA screeners don't want to "feel up the leg until they meet resistance" any more than you want them touching your balls. I did that job for four years and NEVER got comfortable patting down strangers.

The knives and box cutters, nowadays I wouldn't be too worried about. 9-11 may have been almost ten years ago, but I still don't think many people are going to let a terrorist take down a plane by threatening anyone with a knife. The passengers would tackle his ass and beat his face in. Nowadays, you wanna take down a plane, you gotta use explosives.

And I hate to tell you, but if someone really wants to get a bomb on the plane - they're probably going to succeed. All you'd have to do is bring maybe 2 carry on bags... Pack the 4 different components in a couple different bags and assemble it on the plane, in the bathroom. Most explosive material looks like paper or books on an xray machine. (which is a part of the reason they "randomly inspect" bags with physical searches and ETD (Explosive Trace Detection) machines.) There are wires and batteries and watches in just about everyone's bags. Detonators are so small it's easy to miss them in a cluttered bag. And it wouldn't take much explosive material to blow up a plane, or at least put a big hole in the side of it. I guess that's why they started that "no more than 3 ounces of liquid" thing.

I used to have no problem going to concerts... I used to love it. But that job actually made me HATE crowds. I don't have panic attacks but I get really agitated and pissed off. The airport would be so crowded and the checkpoint was so far away from the break room that by the time I got to the break room I had 3 minutes to eat before I had to get back to my post. People would be spinning around lost or talking on the phone and walking slow or leaving their bags where everyone can trip over it. People get tunnel vision in airports and they don't pay attention to the fact they're in other people's way.

I think that job also made me HATE old people. Now, South Florida is the old people capital of the world. But I got more grief from old people than anyone. They're SO rude... and then of course there are the ones that aren't rude but you suddenly look up and say "What the FUCK is that smell?" And there's a little old lady wearing lavender pants with a big brown streak all down one leg. The smells were the worst. When you're forced to be packed in a small checkpoint like sardines, all you smell is sweat and bodies and food and too much perfume. You smell people's cigarettes and breath when you're patting them down. People cough on you and spray you with spit or snot. Especially that time of month, my nose gets extra sensitive and some people's cologne or perfume made me nauseous.

And there's SO many germs. I was sick CONSTANTLY.

...I'm also a diabetic...and when I quit that job, I started taking 1/3 the amount of insulin I was while I worked for TSA. I had no idea stress effected my blood sugar levels that much.

Ugh, ok, rant over.