Source: New York Times
Author: Joe Sharkey

Business travelers love to share stories of adventures and misadventures. Last week's column, which was about what people routinely refer to as airport security hassles and what I call the T.S.A. Follies, brought some doozies. Here's a sampler from the e-mail messages and from follow-up telephone interviews:

"A friend who is an F.B.I. agent was permitted to carry her gun on board an airplane after showing proper identification," said Dr. Stephen J. Firestone from Minnesota. "Her nail file, on the other hand, was confiscated because it could be used as a weapon."

Then there is Barry David, an investment adviser from Tucson who travels domestically and internationally and served in the Navy's submarine service from 1956 to 1966. He wears a pacemaker and is routinely patted down at the airport checkpoint, but he says he gets indignant when he is treated like a suspect after the alarm goes off.

"Last summer, I was so disgusted with all the probing, squeezing, etc., that I showed up in very short shorts, a T-shirt top and flip-flops, with all my military decorations on the shirt just to make a statement," he said. (Yes, he had to remove the medals).

The problem of women being invasively patted down and made to remove clothing at checkpoints has eased, but it evidently hasn't disappeared.

Alexandra Mack, a workplace anthropologist from Connecticut, said she attended a business conference in Santa Fe, N.M., in early April and brought along her 6-month-old son. On the return trip, with infant in arms at the Albuquerque airport, she reports:

"I was dressed in slacks, a T-shirt and a long-sleeve cotton button-down. I was told to remove my long-sleeve shirt since it was outerwear. I saw no one else asked to remove similar articles of clothing. At that point, undressing was physically impossible while I was also holding a small child."

Her demurral got her escorted to the secondary-search pen for a full body search. And, yes, the infant got the perp pat-down as well. "We can all rest assured that the world is safe from baby terrorists," Ms. Mack said.

Speaking of terrorists, Milton Williams is evidently suspected of being one. A totally different Milton Williams, this one from Redding Center, Conn., reflects on this every time he arrives at an airport, and is treated like the elusive 20th hijacker because, he learned, he (and every other Milton or Milt Williams in the country) shares a name with a 20-year-old suspect on a terrorist watch list. "I'm 84 years old," Mr. Williams pointed out.

Chuck Elliott, a professional poet from the Los Angeles area, said he was inspired by last week's column to compose a new work. The title will suffice: "What I Should Have Told That Airport 'Security' Man Who Looked at Every Card in My Wallet."

Amy Alkon, also from the Los Angeles area, almost got her boyfriend busted on a business trip after she visited a flea market and bought a "Barbie-like pair of toy scissors," which she absently tucked into his carry-on bag. "They totally freaked at security," said Ms. Alkon, who writes a column, "The Advice Goddess," syndicated in 100 newspapers. Now, Ms. Alkon says, she is "totally paranoid" going through security because "I have such an imagination."

"I think they're going to identify my four-inch heels as a potential weapon. I also have a slim glass nail file that I got in France, and I'm always worried that they will confiscate it and I will be carted away in leg irons."

Danielle Donovan, a mortgage broker from La Costa, Calif., said that at the Springfield, Mo., airport last year, she watched a guard order an elderly woman in a wheelchair to remove her shoes and "every piece of outer wear, including her sweater."

"The poor lady was wheeled through the metal detector with her stocking feet dragging along the filthy floor," Ms. Donovan said.

In another incident, Ms. Donovan said she declined to remove her shoes at a checkpoint last year, knowing they had no metal in them. Regulations say you are not required to remove shoes, but if they set off the metal detector, you'll get a secondary inspection. Most travelers, however, say they are routinely ordered to remove shoes.

"I found myself trailed to the gate by a plainclothes guy doing his best imitation of a surfer, except for his military posture and the earpiece wire poking out from his ski cap," she said. "So I got up and moved to a food counter, just to see if I was being paranoid. Sure enough, he was pretty soon standing near me watching me eat my turkey sandwich."

David Schraa, a frequent business flier who works in Washington, said that improving "the incredibly shabby and inefficient physical arrangements for this depressing process" would itself enhance security. Like Mr. Schraa, John Craver, a New York architect, suggested that the checkpoints are so badly designed that they resemble yard sales. They are "nothing more than an ad-hoc collection of equipment and cheap folding tables," he said.

They're right on that. Better layout and design would go a long way toward alleviating some of the confusion, if not all of the absurdity. Meanwhile, it's heartening to know that so many of you are packing that very important business-travel tool: a sense of humor.