Twenty-five-ish years ago, my father and I went on a fishing trip in the Florida Keys with a very dear friend of the family, who had been going their for years. I've written about him before, because he had a severe case of polio shortly before Salk's vaccine was developed, and needed a good deal of medical equipment to survive.
As you might imagine, flying with Martin required a lot of red tape, even in those idyllic pre-9/11 days-- he needed assistance in boarding, oxygen available on the plane, some medical supplies in the carry-on, and all of this stuff needed to be cleared with the airline.
Martin had been through all this many times before, but when we got to the airport, we had to go through a ridiculous little three-way dance routine at the check-in counter. The woman at the counter refused to address Martin directly, so everything had to be routed through my father, who had no idea what was needed. It was as if he was serving as some kind of interpreter from English to Handicapped and back again.
"Will he need oxygen on the flight?" she asked.
"I don't know. Martin, will you need oxygen on the flight?"
"He won't necessarily need it, but the bottle needs to be available. It can be stowed under his seat," came the reply.
"He won't necessarily need it, but the bottle needs to be under the seat."
"OK, will he need...?"
It was so offensively stupid it actually became sort of funny.
Nothing has changed in the last quarter-century. If anything, that story suggests that it may have gotten worse, at least for some people. Even by the standards of airport security, that's shameful.
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Cousin of mine is 6th degree black belt Japense swordsman, and deals museum-quality swords, and is friends with Swordmaster to Emperor.
Security guy in airport [pointing to locked case marked "Contents: swords"]: Are they loaded?
Cousin: They are swords.
Security: Okay, but are they loaded?
Cousin: they are museum-quality antique samurai swords.
Security: Okay, but are they loaded?
Cousin: They are not guns. They are swords. Both are categories of weapons, but only one can be loaded, and mine are the other kind.
Security: Okay, but are they loaded?
Cousin: No.
Security: Okay, that's all I wanted to know. Next?
Having just given blood today [1], I am reminded that the Security peep was quite possibly rather bright, but utterly handcuffed by submoronic regulations which dictated an invariant script.
[1] Giving blood, they have to ask you if you've been outside of the United States -- and then ask again if you've been to various parts of Latin America. Unh, right.
Giving blood, they have to ask you if you've been outside of the United States -- and then ask again if you've been to various parts of Latin America. Unh, right.
I haven't given blood recently, but I recall that in the 1980s and 1990s they used to ask whether you had been outside the US within the last 12 months, and separately whether you had ever been to Haiti or Africa. They were actually looking for two different things: the first checked whether you might have been in a malaria risk zone (it can take up to a year for symptoms to show), and the second checked what was considered at the time to be a risk factor for AIDS (which can take several years to become apparent). So at one time the distinction made sense. I don't know if that's still true.
I've worked with a lot of security people since I was in high school ("loss prevention personnel"), a little bit in college (as a lab custodian, I knew the security people) and especially in industry since I'm a defense contractor, and at every place I have worked, the following pattern holds true:
1) The security people at the top, and I mean way at the top, sometimes only one or two people per facility, are going to sharp. Extremely sharp, in ways that will surprise you, no matter how smart you are, because they are your equivalent in their profession. These guys often have multiple degrees, sometimes multiple advanced degrees, in criminal science and something else.
2) Almost everyone else is a drone obtained for as close to minimum wage as the requirements of the job allow. They can be stupid in ways that will surprise you no matter how smart you are, because even in defense contracting, many of these guys are chosen for their ability to sit on a stool and watch a crew of laborers putting up dry wall in a closed area, without falling asleep. (Or equivalent, like walking a beat around a huge facility and tugging every lock, on a schedule where they can prove every lock has been tugged at least once every eight hours.)
I'm guessing that every terminal of a major airport has maybe three people worth talking to, all on different shifts, and the airport as a whole probably has two or three more. The odds of finding and talking to one of these busy people is extraordinarily low unless someone just pulled a five pound bag of cocaine out of your ass during a cavity search, unfortunately.
I know this sounds weird, counter-intuitive, and just plain wrong, but this might have been an attempt at courtesy. Many years ago(pre-911), my grandmother was addressed by one of these people in her nice talking-to-older-people voice and I had to explain that she was deaf. Thereafter, the clerk addressed all her queries to me, oblivious to the fact that though my grandmother was deaf, she quite obviously wasn't dumb; my grandmother would get the question and reply for herself, but the attendant didn't 'hear' it unless I repeated her words.
I repeat, strange as it may seem, the girl was not trying to be rude, she was obviously going out of her way to be kind and courteous. As we were walking away, my grandmother expressed her feelings to me quite clearly, something to the effect of the amount of brains God gave the girl, but that she was 'sweet'.