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THIS Is Why TSA Employees Can Be So Rude & Irritating – Now It All Makes Sense!

a group of people at an airport

It’s rare to find a TSA agent who’s genuinely pleasant. Oh sure, you’ll encounter a bunch who are professional and who might even tell you to have a nice day. But they rarely give eye contact, short of when they’re comparing your face to the picture on your ID. And even fewer of them ever smile. OK, except maybe this guy (really, watch it – he’s awesome!)

You’ll also find a fair share of Transportation Safety Officers who are downright nasty. They yell at passengers. They’re impatient. They don’t explain things adequately. They have little compassion for people who don’t understand because of a language or comprehension barrier. There’s questioning if their sense of authority goes to their heads. And they’re as inconsistent as can be.

But I found something that totally explains why the TSA workers in that last paragraph act as they do. It makes perfect sense…

An audit was done of the Homeland Security Department and the report was released in March 2019. The 36-page (PDF) report highlights that (and I quote):

“TSA Needs To Improve Efforts to Retain, Hire, and Train Its Transportation Security Offers”

Here were some of the findings:

So the TSA workers you meet may be part-time, inappropriate for their job, inadequately prepared for their job, underpaid, forced with mandatory overtime, etc., etc., etc.

On top of that, it took forever for the TSA to adequately protect their workers from COVID-19 while on the job, to the point where someone had to be a whistleblower to get anything done. And even after that, they didn’t start installing acrylic shields at airports until early 2021.

And then we wonder why TSA workers are so crabby?

There may be SOME light at the end of the tunnel. The Biden Administration has ordered the TSA to expand union rights so TSOs could have collective bargaining rights. They’ve also been told to explore pay reform for its screeners. The two combined could help wipe the sourpusses off some TSOs’ faces. But there are still several other issues that will hopefully be addressed so more TSA officers can be at least, you know, pleasant.

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