Of course not; if they trained TSA agents beyond having a simple state machine there wouldn't be so much money left to buy Rapiscan machines. I highly doubt being assholes is due to anything but poor training and their salaries are probably too low for them to really want to put any effort into anything. I'd remove the machines and give them higher wages and better training if I had any say in the matter.
Samuel_Michon|13 years ago
[Most screeners] are only there for the paycheck and generous benefits. Screeners start at $15 per hour, and there is tons of overtime — mainly because they are filling in for the many screeners who don’t bother coming to work. For every 40 hours you work, you receive four hours of vacation and four hours of sick time.
One screener didn’t come to work for four weeks. When he finally reappeared, he asked for another week off. The answer was no. So what did this brainiac decide to do? He took another week off — and didn’t get terminated. People have been caught falling asleep on the job. They get written up, it’s put in their file, and that’s it.
New hires see how bad it is working there, and, believe it or not, TSA does manage to hire some pretty decent people. They just don’t last because they can get a normal job. It’s the people who’ve been there a good number of years who could never find employment elsewhere. When you have a real job, it usually means you have to actually work and think, which a lot of them have a hard time doing.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/confessions_of_tsa_agent_...
69_years_and|13 years ago