As me and my family were returning home to Ireland from JFK Airport we had yet another delightful encounter with the TSA.
We arrived just over 3 and a half hours early for our flight and still ended up running onto our flight due to security “delays”.
When we joined the queue for security the incompetence started almost immediately. TSA agents “directing” people in raised and badly mannered tones. The sentence “Put away your boarding cards people, you shouldn’t have anything in your hands from this point onwards!” was repeated over and over until we finally got to the bag x-ray machines and metal detectors where a stout and angry little TSA agent began to berate people for NOT having their boarding cards out “Everyone who DOESN’T have their boarding cards out is causin’ delays for ‘ERY’BODY”. I politely informed her that her colleauges who were on chaperoning duty of the queue were telling people to stow away their boarding cards, she promptly told me that I “Weren’t listenin’ proper, Sir”.
I bit my tongue and carried on through security after myself and the rest of the people being subjected to this stupidity had to go digging in their bags for their boarding cards.
What happened next is what really irked me, as I passed through the metal detector and started gathering my belongings on the other side the same lady as mentioned before followed me through and said “Sir, SIR…Take your watch! Don’t leave any of your belongings behind!” as she tried to hand me some other gentlemans watch. I replied “That’s not my watch” and began to walk away only to then be stopped and very aggresively asked “SIR, why do you have someone else’s watch!?” to which I said “I don’t, you’re trying to hand me someone elses watch”
It took several minutes for myself and the gentleman who owned the watch to spell out to this moron that it was her who made the mistake and not me, or the watch owner. It was like explaining a Sherlock Holmes case to a toddler that she’d take the watch out of the mans tray before he could and wrongly presumed it was mine. She then, very rudely told us that we we’re “Free to go”.
Holy sh*t.
By: Steve
