Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
I don’t fly often enough to hate it. I’m not fond of the process of getting to the airport, since I’m one of those people who packs the night before, has duplicate copies of the boarding passes, assumes the route to the airport will complicated by a rollover of a semi carrying 40,000 gallons of nacho cheese, and sixteen marching bands will be attempting to pass through security simultaneously while carrying their instruments, and putting dozens of Heath kits full of unassembled electronics parts through the X-ray machines. So I leave early. Very early. My wife likes to stroll onboard as the jetway is disengaging. She’d swing on a vine like Indiana Jones making the floatplane if she could.
Yesterday morning, though, we were in the Arms of the Mouse, and the Mouse will not let you be late for your plane. If your flight is at noon, you board the Disney Magical Express at 9. If your plane is at 7:45 - well. You can guess. We got to the airport with plenty of time, headed through the enormous atrium of the Orlando airport, and waded into the chaotic, clattering panic of the security line. This I hate. This makes me boil. I don’t mean to insult the TSA employees, many of whom are no doubt serious about their jobs and responsibilities, but when they peer at a boarding pass I printed off my home computer as if it’s an Enigma decrypt, well, you realize you are now an extra in the great impromptu show known as Security Theater.
After your documents are approved, and it’s been confirmed that you are not kidnapping a child - she answers to her name, after all - it’s time to unshod thineself, dump all your electronics in a basket, whip off the belt, get out the computer, put it all in bins, shove it through the machine, while a hundred people behind you are pushing forward to do the same thing. Everything piles up at the other end, because people are trying to put on their shoes while a fresh crop of vetted strangers are coming up behind. It’s worse if someone gets pulled over, as I was, because my bag just had so much peculiar stuff. (I do not mind additional inspection, but it doesn’t put my mind at ease.) At least no one had any cause to worry about my many liquids, because they were in the Magic Ziplock Bag, which cast a Level 3 Spell of Protection.
Then . . . relief. Freedom. The concourse with its bookstores, restaurants, bars, power outlets, and grand parade of humanity, from elegantly dressed women to dull-eyed underdressed louts with their baseball cap brims arrayed to prevent their left ear from any sudden downpour. Here I am happy, especially in a civilized airport that allows a man a cigar in a space walled off from the general public. It is unfair to compare the TSA line with the commerce of the mall; the relative ease of the latter is possible because the messy work of security has been done in advance. But if the jobs were switched, I suspect the people who run the restaurants would smooth the security process, and the people who run security would make the simple act of getting a meal an exercise in aggravation and indifference.
It’s odd how things change when there’s money to be made instead of hours to fill.
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Comments :
May '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
This is why I always check my bags. Promenading round the concourse is one of the few pleasures of non-dirigible flight. You don't want to fuss over encumbrances. Also, it's rude to bring big honking carry-ons and try to shove them into the bin whilst knocking the better sort of passenger upside the head.
Of course, Waterstone's is up there with Ollivander's.
Good restaurant managers are the hardest working people ever, actually.
Oct '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Keep your belt on, James. I've never - literally never - had to remove mine (125,000+ miles flown over the past 4 years). Just one fewer (less?) aggravation to endure.
Aug '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
On an entirely unrelated thread (something about bombing Yemen?) a few days ago, I was going to post something to the effect that American warfare is now supposed to have a customer-service dimension. But, I don't know, I just felt like bicycling and swimming and planting roses and fruit trees. Anyway, I think my point can be revived here. We're at war. And despite the aforementioned supposition, war is inconvenient. It is well to debate the usefulness of what TSA (read: Congress, which may not have debated this at all) makes us go through. I and probably all who read this site strongly suspect this kind of "security" guarantees nothing of the sort. (Can't prove it, though: can anyone take a census of evildoers who chickened out just before the Ziploc Test?) But whatever goes on, it won't be fun. Naturally I'd rather have the funlessness directed at, oh, Yemenis. In the meantime, I'd like to say that I have not found TSA to be rude, stupid, or inefficient in any way.
May '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Heath kits!
I built many of those 30 or 40 years ago. I still have my soldering iron. But they're long gone, aren't they?
I don't think Heath kits'll be responsible for any security delays. I just hope they don't limit us to one Ziplock bag of electronic devices!
May '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Lileks: "It’s odd how things change when there’s money to be made instead of hours to fill."
An interesting corollary. I have an adult disabled child. I'm her legal guardian, have the court papers to prove it.
I've discovered if people want something from you (any business, including healthcare providers) that's sufficient.
If you want something from them (any level of government) that's not sufficient, they want more forms, they want this, that the other. It's always delay, delay, delay.
Jun '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
"At least no one had any cause to worry about my many liquids, because they were in the Magic Ziplock Bag, which cast a Level 3 Spell of Protection."
You prompted a real gut laugh with that one, James. It's absolutely healthy to laugh hard like that at least once a day. Thank you, sir.
May '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
I'm just amazed you can remember Heathkits. Of course, I am amazed that people old enough to remember Heathkits -- myself included -- can remember anything at all.
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
I remember Heathkits scattered in pieces all over my brother's stinky bedroom.
Jul '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Heathkit! Dad built their dot-matrix printer for his S-100 bus CP/M machine. Learned to play Star Trek on that thing.
Jul '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
You can't get a decent halal meal in a U.S. airport.
And if you and your goat are planning a honeymoon, she'll have to fly as baggage.
Jun '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
I admit it, I'm preppy. Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, I stayed for a few weeks with a friend of mine as I was hunting for an apartment. One night, he invited me to check out a band that was performing at the Roxy on Sunset Boulevard. When he emerged from his bedroom I notice he was wearing black jeans, a black t-shirt and a black leather jacket. His mouth dropped open when he looked at me. I was wearing khaki slacks replete with pleats, penny loafers, a button-down Polo shirt, a blue blazer and a yellow tie with golf clubs forming x's in a step-and-repeat pattern.
"Tell me you're not wearing that." he admonished.
"What?" I replied. "We're going out, right?"
"To a ROCK CLUB! At least lose the tie."
I complied. When we arrived and waited through the long line we finally approached the bouncer who was frisking everyone for knives, handguns, brass knuckles, what have you. The bouncer took one look at me and smiled. "You can go in."
You see, if everyone dressed preppy, the security lines at the airport would go much faster.
Oct '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
I've had to remove my belt once, and I fly 2-3 times a year.
The one time I did remove it was because I set off the alarm the first time. Most of the time, I breeze right through.
I love how they make you take your sandals off. I guess somebody *really* intelligent might figure out how to hide something in there.
May '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Ah, but there's a problem. Restaurant managers are notorious practitioners of "profiling", and the better the manager the better they can profile a customer at first glace.
May '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Brian, when travelling, always wear a jacket and loafers. The loafers slip on and off easily. The jacket pocket holds your papers. With no luggage to haul around, you're lvin large at that point.
Jun '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Kennedy, yes this is how I usually travel. I once wore a blue blazer, military strip tie and white shirt and unknowingly was walking near a cluster of airline pilots dressed similarly. The TSA agent directed me to a "fast track" line for pilots and flight attendants. I didn't think much of it and thought the agent was just being nice. As I passed through, I heard out of the corner of my ear (as it were) a disgruntled passenger who had been waiting in the very long line for the rest of the unwashed masses complain to the same TSA agent.
"Hey, how come he gets to go through?"
"He's with the airlines," the TSA agent knowingly replied.
I wasn't about to correct him and sheepishly went about the business of retrieving my belongings from the x-ray machine. And no, I was not wearing those little silver pilot's wings on my lapel, nor do I look like Leonardo di Caprio or have two beautiful female flight attendants on each arm...maybe someday...sigh.
May '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
I'd love to teach stewardess school (this way, ladies!). They don't make em like they did in DiCaprio's day. Nurses neither. They wear those dumpy pj's now. The only real nurse uniforms available are made of vinyl in sketchty online costumeries.
Jun '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Kennedy...uh...you're starting to wade into dangerous territory. I don't think those "real nurse uniforms" you describe are for "real nurses".
Jul '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Despite all the inconveniences of modern air travel, I still marvel at the fact that in the time it took Gold Rush Miners to travel from Sacramento to the Gold fields near my home in El Dorado County, travelers today can cross the entire continent and more.
But it is a logjam reassembling articles of clothing and accouterments on the far side of the TSA Queue. And forget checking bags, my infrequent air travel requires me to get on board, fly, deboard, and roll out to a waiting car with just my laptop and some other tech sundries. Then it plays out in reverse in about 5 hours. Checking and retrieving bags takes too darn long.
Jul '10
Re: Let's Put Good Restaurant Managers In Charge of Airport Security
Exactly. I hear Israel's airports are much more efficient than Our's because of this.