the SPOT program

[derien]

It's 52 degrees and it's been gusty windy since last night. Supposedly this is the remains of that last hurricane, Nicole (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I heard at work). The ground is wet, but it doesn't seem to be really raining. However, the wind might be enough to have grounded flights this morning, which will mean more selectees this afternoon, as people switch to later flights.

They restarted the PASS program under the new title, SPOT. No new training for the people who were chosen for it, as far as I can tell, so I think the name is completely politically motivated. They probably didn't want to give people the impression they were going to let bad people through. *eye rolls*

What SPOT does is, they have a few screeners who they trained in recognizing nervous responses in passengers, and they get to specially mark those passengers as selectees. Something I guess they've been doing in Israel for a while, but I guess as far as SPOT is concerned we're one of the pilot program airports. Our Director loves to get us into all the pilot programs.

What it means for me in my own job is that there are 2 less people who are actually on the schedule, making the work a little heavier on everyone else, because those 2 screeners are out in front of the checkpoint interviewing people. Also, we therefore have even more selectees, because we get the chosen ones as well as the ones marked by the computer

Comments

[cygny.livejournal.com]

Teehee, I have a hard time believing that :) May I ask what exactly you do at the airport (apart from annoying)?

[derien.livejournal.com]

Screen passengers and their luggage to make sure everything is safe - they aren't carrying guns and knives and b*mbs and such.

[cygny.livejournal.com]

Oh, security gal ^_^ What happens if you find a guy who's carrying a weapon?

[derien.livejournal.com]

We have cops to handle that.:)

[cygny.livejournal.com]

Do you often get to search cute guys or is that also reserved for the cops?

[derien.livejournal.com]

Hand wandings and pat downs are same gender only - so I get to pat cute girls underwire bras, which many of them don't appreciate. :)

[cygny.livejournal.com]

Pf, their own fault for looking suspicious :P Although I can imagine cute girls might look suspicious more easily than the other kind ;)

[derien.livejournal.com]

Heh.:) I don't get much choice in who ends up getting wanded, usually, since they're given to me by the computer.:) Once, when jimdes used to work there he tried to get cute girls to ring the walk through metal detector so I could wand them, but he only managed to send me one in a busy half hour.:) The only time I can excercise a little choice is if it's very very slow and because I feel it would be noticed and commented on if I chose too many cute girls I tend not to.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Well, if it's a gun or a knife the cops deal with it. What worries me is that the procedures seem a little vague on the contingency of if we think it's that third thing.

[cygny.livejournal.com]

I see. And do you have sort of worker's union? Can't they demand proper procedures? It's quite a serious matter after all, especially in this day and age.

[derien.livejournal.com]

The management REALLY doesn't want us to have a union. One of my co-workers got written up for "forcing people to join a union." Turned out what she was doing was getting people to sign a birthday card. They're so paranoid.

But, it's not that there aren't 'proper' procedures, it's just that the interpretation of said procedures can differ when you have different managers on (no matter how detailed you write a procedure it's always like that). There's erring on the side of caution, and then there's not looking foolish for 'no' reason.