
“How Do TSA Employees Feel About Working For a Despised Agency?” - raju
https://takingsenseaway.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/letter-from-a-passenger-how-do-tsa-employees-feel-about-working-for-a-despised-agency/
======
luu
Objection. Assumes facts not in evidence [1]. I don't like the TSA, and I'm
not friends with anyone who does, but that's because I live in a strange
bubble, surrounded by academics and engineers. Most people don't have a
problem with the TSA.

Here's what happened to me the last time I went through a TSA checkpoint:

I opted out. The TSA agent made a snide remark about about me being separated
from my belongings, which I'd already put on the X-ray conveyor belt [2].
Then, I was forced to wait about half an hour until an agent was free [3].
There were TSA agents standing around, not doing anything, but, those people,
apparently, can't do pat downs.

When an approved agent was finally free, instead of cordially walking me over
to the pat down area, he shoved and body checked me to get me to move. After
the perfunctory patdown, he pointed to my luggage and said I could go get it.
He then stepped in front of me as I started walking towards it and gave me one
last shove, away from my luggage.

So, do I like the TSA? Of course not. I have practical and philosophical
objections to their process, and perhaps 20% of the time when I opt out, I'm
treated like human garbage [4]. But, most people don't have any weirdo
academic objections, so they go through the regular process and everything is
fine, 99% of the time. Sure, they have to to the airport half an hour earlier
now, but that's a small price to pay for what they see as protection from
terrorists.

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2012/08/09/surprise-
gall...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/2012/08/09/surprise-gallup-poll-
people-think-tsa-does-a-good-job/)

[2] It's a bit like being threatened by the mafia: those are some nice things
you have there. It would be such a shame if anything happened to them while
you're away. This was sufficient to keep two couples, who initially decided to
opt-out, from actually opting out.

[3] <https://twitter.com/someben/status/274976070271377409>

[4] It's like walking into a random replication of the Stanford Prison
experimenter [5]. Will the guards be aggressively unpleasant? Maybe!

[5] <http://www.lucifereffect.com/about_content_extensions.htm>

~~~
js2
Counterpoint: I have opted out over a dozen times at a variety of airports
(RDU, SJC, SFO, BUR). I've never been treated with anything but
professionalism, and I dare say, politeness. I was asked why I was opting out
by the TSA officer performing my pat-down at BUR who seemed personally curious
more than anything, but otherwise it's been perfunctory. I've never had to
wait more than a minute or two at most.

~~~
jamesbritt
That's been my experience, more or less. Worst I could say is that mostly they
don't seem enthusiastic, and on one occasion one guy seemed annoyed that I did
not understand some vague instruction about either staying put or not.

But each time they ask me if there are any sensitive areas, each time I tell
them, "Yes, my nuts", and each time they been respectful of my junk.

They really could do better about keeping people with their stuff that's been
passed through the X-ray machine, but overall they seem to appreciate that you
want to keep an eye on it.

------
ImprovedSilence
For some people, jobs are hard to come by, I would wager the majority of TSA
screeners do not have any better paying options, so to criticize them for
being a part of a faulty system, or to paint them as being "from a sixth grade
mentality", or "trying to get employed with border patrol asap" when they are
just trying to provide for themselves and their families, who may not have
better options, is pretty unfair.

To criticize the people at the top, that may be fair argument. But for the
higher ups and policy makers in the TSA, don't forget the old adage: “It is
difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon
his not understanding it"

~~~
clobber
This sounds like a "just doing our duty" argument.

If you work for the TSA you're not just contributing to the problem, you _are_
the problem.

~~~
jlgreco
I don't think it is _quite_ a Superior Orders defense, but it certainly does
seem morally equivalent to me. _"I did it for my starving family"_ and _"I did
it because my commanding officer would shoot me otherwise"_ are probably
pretty related (some regimes do their best to blur the line between these),
but I feel there should be another name for it.

~~~
epochwolf
If anything, the "commanding officer would shoot me" defense is greater than
"I did it for my starving family". In the first case, you know for certain
that you and your family will die if you don't do what you're told. In the
latter, your family may be uncomfortable but it's highly unlikely for anyone
living in America to actually starve.

What makes this more damning is any TSA employee made a conscious choice to do
morally reprehensible work. They had a choice. No one forced them to do their
job.

In this light, the TSA employees come off as more morally bankrupt than
military officers that had a gun to their head. They choose to be active
agents in destroying society in trade for their own comfort.

------
rayiner
I'm quite wary of blaming employees for the perceived faults of their
employers. Too much of our economy depends on morally debatable activity for
me to be comfortable tossing around the "what you do for a living is bad for
America" line willy-nilly.

For example, here on HN people seem very cool with the advertising industry.
But I remember in engineering school, the popular refrain was that advertisers
and marketing people were leaches sucking out the marrow of American industry.
Yet, lots of engineers now happily work for companies in bed with the
advertising industry. If you work for Facebook, you work for a company that
depends heavily on an industry (advertising) that exists mostly because of
government granted monopolies (trademarks), and whose business model depends
on getting teenagers (who aren't competent to enter into contracts and don't
really understand the ramifications) to give away their personal information
in order for advertisers to try and sell them things they don't need. I think
you can make a credible argument that what Facebook and similar companies do
is morally objectionable, and that "I'm just doing my job" is no excuse for
people who work in Silicon Valley figuring out how to maximally exploit these
kids.

But I don't really want to go there (glass houses, etc). I think there is too
much complexity in the underlying moral calculus for it to be reasonable to go
there.

~~~
pdonis
It looks like other people have already gone there; you're just pointing out
that the viewpoint they have stated is not applicable just to the TSA. That
seems like a valid observation to me.

------
asmithmd1
TSA Budget in 2011: $8.1 Billion [1] US air travelers in 2011: 730 million [2]

Cost per screening $11.09

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration)

[2] [http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-
increase...](http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers-
increased-2011-523879)

~~~
kevin_morrill
Not counting the opportunity cost of what those 58,0000 employees could be
doing elsewhere in the economy, not to mention the tax money out doing real
work.

~~~
bo1024
Don't forget the passengers waiting in line. Suppose each person being
screened waits 15 minutes, and makes $5 per hour at their job. That would be
one billion dollars in lost productivity per year.

~~~
codex
Interestingly, given that the US has a fifteen trillion dollar economy, that's
only 0.006% (or 6e-05) of U.S. GDP. I suspect that the economic cost of an
successful terrorist attack on a U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy
more than one part in fifteen thousand.

~~~
jlgreco
> _I suspect that the economic cost of an successful terrorist attack on a
> U.S. aircraft would cost the U.S. economy more than one part in fifteen
> thousand._

Now include the probability of such an event actually taking place, and the
probability that the TSA could prevent it...

A comet strike would cause many trillions of dollars worth of damages. How
much money are we spending right now on a pea-shooter based comet defense
system?

~~~
mctx
> pea-shooter based comet defense system?

I'm pretty sure the state of art of this field is deep core drilling (as of
1998, anyway)

~~~
dredmorbius
The point isn't "pea shooter" as a description of state of the art, but of its
effectiveness. There's nothing we have available to us in technology that
would be able to divert a mass-extinction class meteor (or even just a really-
bad-day meteor) on short notice. Given a decade or more we might be able to
launch a mission to moderately divert an orbit, but at very high expense.

It's the cost-to-effectiveness ratio I believe TSA is being compared.

------
Irregardless
____*Slightly non work-safe image at the top of the linked page (full body
scans of men and women).

Also, one category of TSA agents not mentioned in this piece: Those who seem
to revel in the public's disdain because they can easily make a traveler's
life hell if the mood strikes them. For example, the agents in this breast
milk incident: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhnZlmLGK8>

Any job that grants authority over other people probably attracts this type of
employee.

~~~
nthj
What kind of country do we live in where a link to images that are taken by
the government of its own citizens have to be labeled "NSFW?"

It's surreal.

~~~
dllthomas
Well, anywhere with a nationalized pornography network would qualify, though
that might well be nowhere. Some places with a nationalized health service
could qualify...

~~~
lostlogin
Although patients generally have the choice of treatment and can usually opt
out of parts of their care if they want - travelers have to be screened if
they want travel.

~~~
dllthomas
I wasn't at all saying "nationalized health care is precisely as bad as
invasive TSA screening." I was solely playing with how the parent comment was
worded.

------
homosaur
I've seen this article to be 100% correct in practice. There's a small
minority of agents, who when I opt out, laugh and say "yeah, I don't blame
you, I wouldn't go through these either." There's a majority who are simply
trying to do whatever they can do reduce conflict without getting in trouble.
And there's a small population of middle management douchebags that are trying
their best to use their tiny bit of authority as a club to bludgeon the public
and tell people what to do. These people make the experience miserable,
because they tend to be the equivalent of "shift leaders" on the floor.

Overall, what TSA does is a huge waste of money. It's a lot to spend for
security theater.

------
Zenst
They probably feel better about what people think about them than traffic
wardens feel about public attitude towards them.

You can bet more people dispise traffic wardens than they do TSA, though as a
non driver I like them.

I have also dealt with the TSA when I traveled to America and it was a fast,
most plesant experience. Not everybody has a bad experience with them, they
just don't do massive blogs about there experience oddly enough. Though I was
not impressed with British Airways at all, but thats another topic.

But if you remove them and one plane has a problem as there was not enough
checks and you can bet everybody will demand that the TSA is brought back. If
you remove traffic wardens and one car gets parked illegaly then you can bet
there would not be a sudden demand from the public to reinstate them. With
that think of the traffic wardens and say hello, they are people as well.
Though most think you are some kind of crazy for even saying hello to them as
they have a installed fear of all members of the public due to intereactions
with angry drivers. With that they see all people as angry drivers out to
linch them; So the TSA has a long way to go to be truely dispised. More a case
of misunderstood and apprecieated in some regards, but that often gets
overlooked by the cry's of foul.

Now

~~~
jlgreco
_"But if you remove them and one plane has a problem as there was not enough
checks and you can bet everybody will demand that the TSA is brought back."_

This is a phenomenon that can be seen in other areas too, particularly
technology. I fully expect an uproar the first time a robotic car kills a
family, no matter how much safer robotic cars are statistically.

It is ultimately combination of two problems I think: the inability to deal
with unlikely events rationally, and the strong desire to see some _one_ in
control and responsible. How do we fix these problems? Beats me. Education is
tiring and ineffective, it's statistics vs emotion.

------
downandout
The kinds of people that take these jobs generally lack power over their
personal lives and seem to enjoy abusing the power they have in their
professional lives. Like traffic cops, prison guards, IRS auditors, and others
in similar fields, I think many of these people actually revel in being hated
and in many cases that mentality contributes to the behavior. It's cyclical.

------
hnriot
You could substitute any number of employers in there, it's not just the TSA
that's despised. Tax collectors, politicians, financial analysts that nearly
bring down the US economy, traffic cops, the list goes on.

I don't concern myself too much with empathizing with TSA employees, it seems
like an odd thing to do. There are more important things to worry about in
this world.

~~~
marquis
There's one difference with many of these examples: unlike experiencing a mean
TSA officer going through security you can get someone to help you (family
member, attorney), or request another representative. If you don't like your
pat-down officer at the airport you would have extreme difficulty in
requesting another persons assists you.

One of the reasons we hate the TSA so much is that you lose all control
between the gates. If things go badly for you you must comply regardless or
face genuine time-sensitive consequences.

------
mattmaroon
That's not so much an answer to the question as a rant against the TSA. I've
asked one something like that once and she said she was just glad to have a
stable job. I have a feeling that's the answer for most of them.

------
aneth4
Geeks love to hate the TSA. I travel a LOT - all year - and I find the TSA to
be professional and cordial in carrying out their job, more so than any
similar agency I've dealt with in other countries.

Some TSA policies are ridiculous, but hardly a reason to waste time to
"despise" them. If the TSA were the worst the government can throw at us, the
country would be in much better shape.

------
dllthomas
Walking through new fancy scanner with nothing unusual on my person? Several
complaints on the display and I'm groped as they make sure I'm not smuggling
whatever.

Carry-on full of hand-soldered electronics and military hardware? Completely
ignored.

I really appreciate how they're spending billions of our money. HEY - GUYS
TRYING TO FIX THE BUDGET: I THINK I FOUND SOMETHING YOU CAN CUT!

~~~
RandallBrown
I saw a girl walk through security with an open water bottle in the side
pocket of her backpack. She was foreign too, so it's even a little more
surprising nobody noticed it.

------
jpdoctor
We really need to subject congressmen and congresswomen to these searches.
They should not be exempt.

My guess is that is the only way the problem gets taken care of quickly.

~~~
chadillac83
Not sure if you've ever flown on a private jet but you just drive up to it,
there is no TSA or security measures in place, you literally take your car
onto the tarmac and walk onto a jet, it's marvelous.

With that said I don't know how many of these congressmen/women travel via
mass commuter air transit (RFK died in a private jet, Sen. Ted Stevens died in
a private plane, etc.) but I'm willing to bet a large majority of them don't,
and therefore don't get to encounter the standard procedure or are ushered
through unabated. Imagine some geek in a blue shirt telling John McCain he has
to take off his shoes and belt to come though the check point... very
unlikely.

~~~
philwelch
There's a bit of a false equivalency between JFK Junior's private jet (RFK was
assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan) and Ted Stevens' death aboard an Alaska bush
plane. Small propeller planes are not an uncommon way to travel in Alaska
since much of the state is still wilderness.

On a less important note:

"you literally take your car onto the tarmac and walk onto a jet, it's
marvelous"

Wait, do you just leave your car parked at the tarmac for the whole trip?

~~~
Crake
I'd imagine most people able to afford a private jet (or to let a friend
borrow it or whatever) can similarly afford some sort of valet service. That,
or maybe there's some sort of parking space right by (or even inside?) the
hangar for the private jet where you could leave the car. I'm a bit curious
now too as to standard protocol on it.

------
jpxxx
Not badly enough, apparently.

------
DanBC
There are other despised professions.

Journalists (at least in the UK); politicians (especially when voting wage
rises for them and wage cuts for nurses); estate agents (US realtors, not sure
if the US feels the same way); and bailiffs.

TSA employee is probably low wage with minimal entry requirements, so it's a
good thing that people without work are taking work.

It's lousy for them that the only thing available is for an agency of dubious
effectiveness and vast expense.

------
arbuge
Maybe they console themselves by thinking that at least it beats working for
the IRS? :-)

Seriously, "despised" is a bit of a strong word... inconvenient sure, despised
probably not, for most people at least.

------
rurounijones
Any time I hear about polls being used as "evidence"

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA>

