In Lexington, KY I was chided for taking out my laptop "You don't need to do that" and then at Dallas Fort Worth I got chided for not taking out my laptop. Kafkaesque is the best word I have to describe it. Turns out Lexington has nicer/newer scanners and somehow I'm supposed to know which scanners you need to take your laptop out for.

Additionally I want to make a scene every time I hand over documents and get told "I don't need this" since if I hadn't provided that ID/Passport/Boarding pass there was an equal chance I'd get berated for not providing it. There is zero empathy for the traveller. If I walk forward I get yelled at, if I wait to be called I get yelled at, it's infuriating. Everything about the airport feels like a lose-lose scenario to me.

I don't fly that often and every time I do I hate the airport experience so much because I feel like I'm constantly doing _something_ wrong.

The security theater of the TSA is just the moldy cherry on top of the shit sundae that is flying.

I'm pretty sure this is a purposeful "feature" of security at least for North America. They don't want anyone getting comfortable with the process and constantly make changes to ensure this. I'm not sure what this is supposed to accomplish other than to make air travel less comfortable.

I recently flew and the airport had gotten the new scanners since the last time I had gone somewhere. The signage was confusing as only some of the lines had signs that specifically said you didn't have to take out your electronics on "this lane only". Even with the new scanners they were pulling out half the bags for additional screening and only had one person doing the additional screening.

Coming back from overseas I saw how it was supposed to work, walked up and they directed me to a line and a specific bin loading station, had someone remind me to ensure my pockets were empty, walked through the scanner and my bag was already waiting for me, took all of 2 minutes.

what i do in tsa lines is just watch the people in front of me and the directions given to them. It's kind of hard to ignore actually.