![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I always have been contrary, as regular readers and friends of mine might know by now. Media hype and hoopla tend to make me want to do just the opposite of whatever they seem to be encouraging. Today people want to get all wound up about the second anniversary of the Twin Towers attack. Yesterday and today there've been specials about it on TV, and people who have some connection to the situation are making their posts.
It's not that I'm untouched by it, not at all. The job I have exists because of this event. In addition, today is the one year anniversary of my actually working this job - we had a few weeks of training and then went live on the one year anniversary date. So of course we were extra vigilant today, and people were notably nice to us. I don't think I had one cranky customer today who asked why we were doing this. And my co-workers were all well-disposed toward each other because we had our one year anniversary party last night. Fewer people flew, so overall we weren't as busy, and had a lot of time to socialize. All in all it was a pleasant day at work.
And we got through it without any major incidents. There was a guy who'd apparently accidently glued a rock inside his shoe - it looked so damned odd on the x-ray that he got his shoe cut open by the police, and I don't think he got to fly today.
So why am I feeling vaguely annoyed? I guess I just feel like this is "be nice to screeners" day. Every other day people feel like they have a right to be shits to us, the airlines feel like they can do end runs around us and pressure us to let people through more quickly, they find every way they can to make sure we're going to inconvenience passengers less. Most of the time I get the impression we're considered a big nuisance, and our role is reduced to that of a dog and pony show - a little act put on to make the public think the government is doing something to keep them safe. If we were really important, if Homeland Security were really important, why are we not treated better? Not just by the public, but by our employers? Why do they want to keep us as a bastard combination of military and regular goverment employees with the worst of both worlds?
It's not that I'm untouched by it, not at all. The job I have exists because of this event. In addition, today is the one year anniversary of my actually working this job - we had a few weeks of training and then went live on the one year anniversary date. So of course we were extra vigilant today, and people were notably nice to us. I don't think I had one cranky customer today who asked why we were doing this. And my co-workers were all well-disposed toward each other because we had our one year anniversary party last night. Fewer people flew, so overall we weren't as busy, and had a lot of time to socialize. All in all it was a pleasant day at work.
And we got through it without any major incidents. There was a guy who'd apparently accidently glued a rock inside his shoe - it looked so damned odd on the x-ray that he got his shoe cut open by the police, and I don't think he got to fly today.
So why am I feeling vaguely annoyed? I guess I just feel like this is "be nice to screeners" day. Every other day people feel like they have a right to be shits to us, the airlines feel like they can do end runs around us and pressure us to let people through more quickly, they find every way they can to make sure we're going to inconvenience passengers less. Most of the time I get the impression we're considered a big nuisance, and our role is reduced to that of a dog and pony show - a little act put on to make the public think the government is doing something to keep them safe. If we were really important, if Homeland Security were really important, why are we not treated better? Not just by the public, but by our employers? Why do they want to keep us as a bastard combination of military and regular goverment employees with the worst of both worlds?