The Travel Writer as Airport Screener: ‘I Feel Ridiculous’
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 03.07.07 | 12:03 PM ET
We’ve all trudged through airport security lines as Transportation Security Administration screeners dutifully X-rayed our bags and reminded us to remove our shoes, and our belts, and our watches, and our pocket change. We’ve watched their sad confrontations with annoyed travelers. We’ve thought: what a tough, thankless, miserable job. Then we’ve boarded explosives-free flights and gone on our merry way. But Condé Nast Traveler writer Barbara S. Peterson was so curious about the system that she applied for—and landed—a $13-an-hour screening job with the TSA. Her story about her short stint with the TSA is online, and it’s a good read.
In it, she explores the challenges and shortcomings of the TSA, and also just what it’s like to be “on the other side.”
After she reminds passengers to remove their jackets and shoes on his first day on the job, she writes:
“I feel ridiculous. Passengers on the other side of the metal detector tune me out (assuming they can even hear me) as if I were a barely intelligible train station announcer. After years of traveling through airports just like this one, I find it unnerving to be on the other side; I realize that I too was one of these distracted fliers who ignored the monotonous droning which I am now directing their way.”
Note: To avoid having to click through all 15 pages, you can see the entire story on one Web page by clicking here.
Photo by Ingorrr, via flickr. (Creative Commons).
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
