What A Difference Two years Can Make

August 28, 2009 | Uncategorized

Being in tourism public relations I make a lot of presentations and carry a lot of “stuff” — a laptop, projector, files, etc. The problem is I don’t always remember where I’ve tucked stuff away. Yesterday I found I better pay more attention to my tucked-aways.

Running for a flight through crowded airports doesn’t jog my memory either and New York’s LaGuardia can be crowded. Designed when 10 flights a day was a full schedule, its security areas now handle 23+ million passengers in an area slightly larger than a good-size igloo in Alaska.

At security yesterday I came face-to-face with the moment travelers fear — when the belt comes to a halt seconds after you put your bags into the mouth of the xray machine. Everyone within 50 feet, of course, immediately looked up to see who screwed up.

The TSA guy — the one with the computer — now had his face so close to the screen that one sneeze would have launched it across two runways.  And then to my chagrin he yells out “We’ve got a whole bag of electronics here,” as if he’d just caught the bag man for Sony.

“What’s the problem?” I thought, as I followed another TSA-er to a table to rummage through my bag.

“Do you have a lot of electronics in here?” he asked, opening the bag. “Just a camera,” I replied, thinking all of my “stuff” was in the other bag.

He then pulled out a camera, quickly followed by a small GPS navigator for a car. (”Oh, and that too.”)

He reached back in and took out another camera, (”Oh, I forgot about that…”), followed by a tape recorder (”Oh, yeah, that too…”).

He reached back in and pulled out a laptop projector the size of a telephone book which I had completely forgotten about (”Oh, uh-h-h …”). By this time I began to think I was working for Sony.

“Oh, this is it,” he said holding up the projector. “With all the other little electronic things it makes the computer think it’s one large electronic box. I’ll just put this through again quickly.”

This guy and the others there had a great attitude, all smiling and chatting with passengers stuck in long lines, even during pat-downs. And I was out of there quickly too — what a difference from the horrors of security at LGA two years ago.

Maybe TSA has been listening to all our gripes after all.

Jim Ferri