Shirts That Go Hard

You may be white and/or attractive.

I'm at least one of those and have had similar experiences. Turns out that people tend to be nicer to you if you fit into one of those categories (or both). I had to check my privilege after discovering this.

I have found most TSA agents to be pretty unintelligent. So they are friendly when things are going well but quickly turn into assholes as soon as something goes wrong. They mostly have a holier than thou attitude. Also my wife has had shit stolen by the TSA before. Largely though they were created as a way to surveil and harass the American people so I am just opposed to their existence on moral grounds.

I've had some odd experiences with TSA.

One agent did a full body X-Ray, then pulled my bag to the side and searched through it because I had the gall to opt-out of the facial recognition (where he then accidentally took five photos of other people before figuring out how to hit the "no" button) He yelled at me and my family, then made someone else take over his spot specifically so he could handle every step of my extra screening that he solely decided to do himself. A different agent saw and just came to have a chat with me though. Hard to believe they had to work together.

Another time, 3 TSA agents had to give me a randomly assigned screening on my boarding pass, and they started gambling real money with each other on what my age was. (all of them were wrong)

Definitely depends on the airport. The couple in front of me boarding a flight in Montana had clearly just got done with some camping, and tried bringing a fire extinguisher sized can of bear mace onto the plane. TSA thought it was hilarious. They confiscated it, sure, but all the while laughing, and the couple still boarded their flight without a hiccup. Can't imagine that going well at LAX.

Edit to add: this was the same airport where some cowboys were holding a raffle for rifles INSIDE the airport. Just a whole lot of guns on a table. Ok I guess 🤷