RSSFriday B.S.: Careful What You Pack
Jul 04
Two travel weeks in a row, and I am already fried of air travel enough for a lifetime. Twice I had TSA agents stop me because of what was in my bag. The first incident was because of a rogue toothpaste tube that didn’t end up in a proper sealed baggie. The TSA agent pulled my backpack aside and said, “I’d like to look through this.”
I said to her, “Can I at least get my stuff first” as I had already been stripped of my belt and shoes trying to get through the x-ray machine. So she agreeably let me rethread my belt and plunk my shoes on before hauling me to a table off to the side and begin sifting through the contents of my backpack.
Here is what was inside:
Clothes for the weekend
1 book
An iPod mini
A deck of cards
A toothbrush, in a baggie
The offensive toothpaste, exposed in all its raw glory, like an erect penis on a nude beach.
She explained to me my breach of TSA-etiquette, that toothpaste needed to be sheathed in the plastic baggie before going through security. I forget exactly how I responded, but it prompted her to then ask me, “Are you okay, sir? I detect some aggression in your voice.” Which was a polite way of saying, bitch shut up or I’m going to cavity search you. I couldn’t help it, I took one more dig and told her, “I bet you get that a lot.”
To her credit, she didn’t take the bait. Instead, she took my bag back through security, with the toothpaste gagged and bagged. I made it to the gate without further conversation.
Now, let’s be real. The problem with the TSA is that every airport follows different rules and most of those rules seem to be applied arbitrarily. So it’s not really a surprise that travelers a) don’t have a fucking clue what’s expected of them and b) think TSA agents are bunch of douche bags.
But that said, the fact that air travel sucks like LDOF is not completely the fault of the TSA. Airports are like cattle holdings, airplanes are just airborne diseases in a box, and flight attendants, pilots and gate agents are trapped into taking the blame for the decisions of the airline. And the customer service employees are probably just as unhappy with how things are going as anyone else.
Boarding my flight to Las Vegas was reasonably easy because we stayed at the bar and drank beers until the exact moment that we could just walk on to the plane. Coming back from Vegas wasn’t that easy. The flight was delayed 45 minutes before we even arrived at the airport. By the time we arrived at the gate, it was delayed 90 minutes. By the time we took off, it was over 2 hours late, it was after 1 a.m. the bags around my eyes looked like black holes.
The official reason for the delay was weather at the plane’s point of origin. But as the plane landed at McCarran, another plane that had just left the gate swung back around to unload some unruly passengers, taking up the docking space. That delayed our plane getting to the gate another 30 minutes longer than it needed to. And while we were exhausted, dehydrated and pissed off at the terminal, no doubt the people on the plane were just as excited to be stuck on the tarmac for 30 minutes at someone else’s drunken leisure.
It was after midnight and most of us were trying to grab some sleep while waiting to get airborne. But I’m sure the gate agents got flack for the delay from someone. Why did the plane with the disruptive passengers have to come back to our gate in particular? The problem from a traveler’s perspective is that all these kind of delays seem more like poor planning than anything else, and except for the gate agent or a flight attendant in the line of fire, who exactly can you complain to when shit goes wrong as it inevitably seems to?
On my third flight of the week, again leaving Logan Airport, everything seemed to be hunky-dory (I stowed the damn toothpaste in the baggie this time and got no trouble from TSA.) We had stationed ourselves at the gate ahead of boarding, so I got the pleasure of watching the passengers jockey for a better seat, an aisle, a first class upgrade, anything to make them feel special and loved. Lovin’ is hard to come by these days for air travelers. Oh I suppose a select few have enough miles to call themselves special. Plus there’s a new fastlane type registration to get through security for travelers at some airports. It’s called the Clear Lane, but I’ve only seen it myself at San Francisco International. But the rest of us are just given the cold shoulder and, if we’re lucky, we are politely told to go fuck ourselves.
On my last flight of the week, again back to Boston, we watched a lady swear up and down that she paid for a first class ticket and was peeved to be denied early boarding and further peeved to be told her ticket wasn’t even first class. The gate agent was harried enough just trying to board people (again, 30 minutes behind schedule, supposedly because they still had to clean the plane) much less dealing with this woman who not only was in a fury, but was insisting the gate agent fix the problem that clearly had been made by a travel agent. Plus, there was no way for the gate agent to know whether the problem is really a mistake, or whether the woman just heard what she wanted to hear. How many times a day does that happen?
The thing is, when you’re the passenger getting screwed, it’s hard to take a deep breath and try to be rational about it. And for the gate agent, you basically get reamed even though your sole purpose in life is to make sure that each passenger that boards has a boarding pass. That it’s in a nutshell. While it’s important to remember that the passenger has no where else to take complaints (unless you’re industrious enough to write a letter, but from personal experience, I can tell you it doesn’t get you very far,) it is also useful to recognize that the employee is essentially paid to take our shit and swim it like its ice cream. I feel sorry for all of us.
I used to love air travel. I still love being physically in the air. The hum of the plane. The bounce and rhythm of the air currents. It all works through me like yoga. But getting there lately really sucks all the energy from you. It’s not just a physical toll of being shipped in a metal crate for six hours or so to cross the country. It’s the mental energy not to go postal on airline employees, or pick needless fights with TSA agents, or smack that flight attendant across the ass for bumping into you for the bazillionth time. Even for short trips, air travel these days is hellacious.
After my first run-in with the TSA over a tube of toothpaste, I thought I was being a particularly savvy traveler when I stowed it inside the ziplock bag. I got no bother twice through security, at Las Vegas and as I mentioned, the next time through at Logan. But on my very last flight, standing in security line with my shoes in one hand and my bag in the other, the TSA agent says to me, “You need to take that out and run it through the x-ray separately.”
I opened my mouth to say something snotty, but then thought better of it. Instead, I gave her a polite-enough nod, and did exactly as I was told.
