I may have mentioned this before.

[derien]

When you're dropping off your luggage and the screener asks "is your bag locked?" the information that they wish to know is if the bag has a lock on it. A lock is a device which can only be opened with some specific knowledge or implement, such as a key or a combination. A twist tie is not a lock. A zip tie is not a lock. A peice of yarn is not a lock. The answer to "is your bag locked?" should be "yes" or "no." Not, "Well, as locked as it's going to be. I don't know who would want to steal my bowling balls." Especially not when I'm dashing to the front of the machine to collect your bag and I have something like eight seconds to get back behind the console before it starts to do it's thing once again.

Also... why would anyone pack a 2-liter of Pepsi? Afraid that they will arrive in their hotel room and not be able to get any Pepsi? That's a severe addiction.

Oh, but the best bag I opened today: A golf bag, and there's golf balls and golf shoes and such... but no golf clubs. Instead of clubs they had a couple of mops and some type of long handled scrubber. There are no mops where they're going, and they need to clean up the golf course?

So, while I can still remember them, here's some of the silly jokes I heard today (I have forgotten something key about the setup of the best one, so I'll leave that for now.):

Did you hear that a couple of little old ladies had some trouble at the airport? They had knitting needles, but that's okay if you also have yarn. The problems started when they said they were going to knit an Afghan.

Did you hear about the teacher who had trouble at theairport? He had a slide rule and textbooks and compasses. They arrested him for having Weapons of Maths Instruction. He was also suspected of having links to a terrorist group called Al Gebra.

I can't use the line, "these are the jokes, I don't dance," because I do dance. ;)

Comments

[mollyrazor.livejournal.com]

Those jokes rule.

Atlanta's security is amazing. It's one of the busiest airports in the world, and at 2:30 PM on a Friday I got through in less than 10 minutes. They have this huge corralling system they send everyone through, and when you actually get close to the machines, they have long tables set up before all of them so people have plenty of time to take out their laptops, etc. I was quite impressed. Also, it's pretty funny to see hundreds of businessmen standing around shoeless and beltless and jacketless.

Also, when I walked through the metal detector, the guy on the other side said "May I see your boarding pass?", and then when I handed it to him he said, "How about a smile?" Which usually, I hate it when people say that to me, but he got a huge smile from me because I was so impressed with his good attitude. I could never deal with all those people.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is hard to keep a good attitude lots of times, as I know you are well aware.:) The people are harder to deal with at the checkpoint than any other place I've ever worked. Not only the passengers and their sheer numbers, frustrations, and having to get all touchy-feely with them, but also the supervisors and co-workers. Most of the co-workers I love to death, but I sort of have to in order to not kill them, as we do chew each other new assholes all the time in the course of getting annoyed about stuff.

I DO hope that the 'Jetport' expansion will include more space for us so we can have proper staging areas for the passengers, space for doing the selectees properly, and more equipment. Some of the new procedures are really time/space/equipment intensive and are making things all screwed up, here.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Another amusing thing - watching the jacketless, shoeless, beltless businessmen doing The Airport Macarena as they check their pockets one last time before going through the metal detector. :) I feel like I should draw a cartoon for this.

[licking-suntan.livejournal.com]

Also... why would anyone pack a 2-liter of Pepsi?

My friend's mom packed a whole bag full of junk food when she went to France. She was afraid she wouldn't find anything she liked to eat there.

I'm the world's pickiest eater, even before the celiac's, and I still found plenty to eat in France.

I must declare that I am drunk right now.

[derien.livejournal.com]

hee - drunken replying, yay! :)

Oh those French, they're not known world-wide for the elegance of their cooking. In America their known for being the only first world country where they eat weird shit like frogs legs and snails.

[mhw.livejournal.com]

Then America is very foolish.

Name one - one - decent cheese that America is famed for. And if you say 'Monterey Jack' I shall just laugh at you.

As for eating snails: snails are molluscs. Clams are molluscs. Can you say 'New England clam chowder'? Good. Thought you could. Oysters? they're molluscs too. Chesapeake Bay oysters. American through and through. Now what's so different about snails?

those French, they're not known world-wide for the elegance of their cooking.

Consider the phrase haute cuisine. Know the language? French. Odd, that. Gastronomie. Gourmet. Cordon bleu.

*chuckle* You must have been really, really drunk to come out with that. Really.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Heheh, my comment was actually meant as sarcastic, because licking_suntan's friend's mom was so silly as to think she wouldn't be able to find anything she would like to eat in France, so she took all kinds of junk food. I guess I needed to place the [sarcasm mode on] tag in there. I just found it incredibly appalling that someone would import junk food to eat when they're going to one of the countries best known for good food. (and licking_suntan was drunk, not me.;))

But, I like Monterey Jack cheese very much - I'll eat like a quarter of a stick with pepperonie and corn chips for my lunch.;)

[mhw.livejournal.com]

Ooops... *embarrassed blush* I hadn't considered sarcasm - just that with you having mentioned posting-while-drunk... oh dear. I should read more carfully, shouldn't I? *hides*

Monterey Jack's actually OK - it's not a bad cheese, at all, just that I find it a shade on the bland side for my preference. I went through terrible cheese deprivation when I was in the US, you know - I just could not believe how much one was expected to pay in Boston for a perfectly ordinary Camembert or English Cheddar. And as for Roquefort! you'd have thought it was made of gold...

The mournful explanation from the only really good cheese seller that I could find after a few days of searching: "You see, most Americans don't really like cheese very much. Not cheese that tastes of cheese, if you know what I mean."

I've really never understood that. All that good grazing land, you'd think that the US could have come up with just one really stunning indigenous cheese... *sigh*

But the English can be just as bad about not eating "all that nasty foreign stuff", though they do seem to have got a lot better at it in the past couple of decades. Just not fast enough for my tastes :D

[mhw.livejournal.com]

A peice of yarn is not a lock.

I need a better typeface. Reading that as 'yam' is too weird...