So I went to check in online, and it asked me to check some boxes for what luggage I wanted to bring on board. I did, and it told me that to carry on both a backpack and a roller bag it’ll be $45, or $65 if I try to play games and they have to check stuff at the gate.
I said fuck that, and unchecked some boxes. It said I couldn’t check in without putting a credit card on file, that they would charge if there were any issues and they wound up needing to charge me for my luggage. It wouldn’t let me continue without putting a credit card on file and checking a box that said they could charge me for my luggage, if they felt it was excessive.
I said fuck that and decided to check in at the airport. I threw all my stuff in a backpack to remove any wiggle room, and the kiosk said the same thing. I talked to one of the people, and she said it’s a new policy. I pointed out that I paid for my ticket, she could see I had only a backpack, and I wanted to get in the airplane. She told me to go talk to the guy at the end.
I talked to the guy at the end, politely, and eventually he printed a boarding pass for me. But you should know they’re up to some bullshit.
I stopped flying United when they beat the shit out of one of their passengers and dragged him off the plane
For those unfamiliar with that incident:
On April 9, 2017, at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, four paying customers were selected to be involuntarily deplaned from United Express Flight 3411 to make room for four deadheading employees. One of these passengers was David Dao, 69, a Vietnamese-American who was injured when he was physically assaulted and forcefully removed from the flight by Chicago Department of Aviation Security officers. Dao, a pulmonologist, refused to leave his seat when directed because he needed to see patients the following day. In the process of removing him, the security officers struck his face against an armrest, then dragged him – bloodied, bruised, and unconscious – by his arms down the aircraft aisle, past rows of onlooking passengers. The incident is widely characterized by critics – and later by United Airlines itself – as an example of mishandled customer service.
did no one go to prison for this??? wtf
No, because United employees didn’t beat the passenger up, the police did. That’s not even remotely close to the worst thing that cops have gotten away with.
i thought that wasn’t actually police
Following a review prompted by the incident, in July 2017 the Chicago Department of Aviation reported that its unsworn, unarmed airport security personnel were not actually police officers under Illinois law. Their uniforms, badges and vehicles had been “improperly” labeled “police” for historical reasons. It promised that the incorrect insignia would be removed within months.
I refuse to fly domestically anymore just because the TSA is all security theater, I refuse to go through their backscatter x-ray, and I’m not interested in their enhanced groping. I will ride my motorcycle 1000 miles in a single day rather than take a plane anywhere.
I will ALWAYS get the grope if I avoid the cancer box.
I have a deep-seated fear of the cancer box. I was okay with it - I get x-rays a bit for ongoing Achilles issues - until I learned that when Boston TSA asked the FAA what the risks are of standing nearby it for hours at a time, the response was
No. We're not telling. STFU & GBtW.That’s when I decided I’d like to avoid it.
What I’ve learned:
- sometimes they’re bored and don’t wanna do it so they’ll wave you through an arch and you’re out.
- don’t call it a cancer box to an obvious type-a failed-cop TSA agent or you’ll have a discussion you’ll want to get out of quickly
- sometimes they want to be dinks. If you have any shame - not me, ex-army - it may not be comfy to show a dad-bod to the other passengers. Take the hazing.
- usually they roll their eyes and call the noob over and it’s a perfunctory process.
So there.
I used to work in a job that involved handling radioactive materials. We had dosimeter badges to track long term exposure to radiation. One pass through the full body scanner at a TSA checkpoint would make the dosimeter badge come back from the lab at greater than monthly allowable exposure. I’ll take the grope.
“why are cancer rates increasing?”
It’s very hard for me to care if cancer rates for TSA agents go through the roof; they willingly signed up for that shit, so fuck 'em.
Let’s be fair.
They signed up to be the lowest of the overly-entitled rentacops out there. that’s on them.
They didn’t sign up to get irradiated by some shady shit that the FCC is all “no. Fuck off” about when asked about safety concerns.
So let’s render unto Caesar on this one. The FCC (FAA? I may have that wrong) are huge dinks for knowingly subjecting their people to rads way in excess of what’s cool – worse if you look at the TSA people and realize they aren’t pasty-whites and then it’s mean to minorities.
And Logan intl are dinks, just like whatever union the TSA people are in, for not supporting and protecting the staff. That lawsuit is gonna be like Erin Brockovich II .
And this just reminds you that if they could get other jobs then they will. The people who can’t dead-sea-effect out of there are gonna be absolutely unemployable elsewhere. And that fills me with a warm and fuzzy feeling about the mental capacity and happiness of TSA agents and their international emulants.
They signed up to be the lowest of the overly-entitled rentacops out there. that’s on them.
Exactly my point.
The FCC (FAA? I may have that wrong)
I’m pretty sure that the TSA falls under the Dept. of Homeland Security, as does Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
realize they aren’t pasty-whites and then it’s mean to minorities.
You see that makes it worse, right? You’ve got a lot of non-white people signing up for the job of a rent-a-cop so that they can abuse the same kind of authority that is leveled against the populations that the job attracts. It’s like a black kid on the south side of Chicago looking at the ways that CPD abuses suspects and say, goddamn, how do I get into that gig?
And this just reminds you that if they could get other jobs then they will.
Eh. Maybe some of them. Maybe. But policing attracts a specific kind of person that wants that job; sometimes it’s people that are genuinely white knights, but they generally get run out pretty fast. More often it’s people that want authority. Given that TSA pay ain’t great, and that we’re in an era–temporarily, if Trump wins–of historic high employment, I don’t think that too many of the people in the TSA are really stuck there.
