TSA, LAX and My Low-Cut Shimmery Underwear on Security’s Conveyor Belt

Walking through the airport to go do some PD for a school in Texas this week (BTW, I’ve been on the road WAY too much this summer) I found myself, as all of us inevitably do when we travel, in a security line.

A security line that was going absolutely nowhere.

Goodness, I said to myself, don’t we all just love how efficient airports are these days? And with nothing to do other than to contemplate the inner machinations of brilliance on display and try to take a replicable lesson from the underpinnings of unparalleled competence and unrivalled excellence so clearly set before me, I started pondering “ways to improve the system”.

That’s right, I decided to take on TSA (Travel Security Administration) at LAX (Los Angeles International Airport and Cattle Car Corporation).

The first thing they needed, I realized, was an API and AYP score. I mean how could I truly begin to gage their effectiveness if I did not have a basis of comparison? So I recognized, right then, in order for me to truly assess TSA at LAX I’d be needin’ me some bubble tests.

Bubble tests to make the employees jump through a whole host of hoops to measure the qualifications of the aspiring employee before they were hired. (And if they didn’t get enough correct bubbles the first time, I’d send them back to choose more bubbles.) Bubble tests to measure the job these employees were doing as they performed their duties. Bubble tests, bubble tests, bubble tests. Trust me, I saw about a zillion places I could use them.

That lady frisking the mom with the 3 month old questioning the contents of the breast milk – had she been given enough bubble tests to administer such a rousting, I wondered.

(Note to self: invest in a company that makes bubble tests… it’s a growth industry.)

That’s when I realized that if I really want to improve TSA at LAX I’d be needin’ me some really good bubble test graders and bubble test makers, too. Yep, some psychometricians with fancy degrees in order to create fair, accurate and equitable bubble tests so that my bubble tests did not discriminate against any airport employees based on cultural, racial, gender-based, or sexual preference differences.

After all, bubble tests that aren’t fair might taint the reputation of bubble tests everywhere and being a public school teacher in the day and age of NCLB, I could never dare to take such a risk.

Of course, I’d go further! Does anyone realize that security folks in airports nowadays don’t get paid by the customer; they get paid by the hour. This means that whether or not they process 30 people in sixty minutes or 60 people in sixty minutes, they get paid the same either way.

Merit pay… that’s what this system needed (once the bubble tests were in place of course).

I was on a roll!

I cooked up all kinds of great ways to improve the system such as instituting a hierarchical system whereby the people who run TSA at LAX would never have had to actually work as a boots-on-the-ground TSA employee at LAX. (i.e. Real experience might muddle their thinking.) And then I’d make all passengers take off their shoes, belts, watches, cell phone and shimmery low-cut underwear. (What, you didn’t think I’d abandon their best ideas, did you?) I would come in and revolutionize TSA at LAX!

Then the line started to move and I realized, “Yo, Doof-o… you don’t have any idea what you are talking about… a system like that would never work.”

So I grabbed my low-cut shimmery underwear off security’s conveyor belt and jumped a plane to Texas.