Being a human screener at an airport has to be one of the most hated professions right now, but I doubt they get spat on or have feces thrown at them like prison guards do. Or their fingers bit like some dentists. Probably just a lot of verbal abuse. *shrug*
When I heard about the story of the 82-year old cancer survivor who was "humiliated" by airport security in Calgary, it got me thinking, despite the embarrassing situation, it's slightly reassuring to know that security personnel were doing their job properly.
I actually don't have a lot to say in defence of these workers, other than that I think for this one particular instance in an airport or similarly related setting, it's good to have unapologetic, robotic, and emotionless workers because in order to be 100% effective, they need to assume that every single person going past them is a deadly terrorist making their best effort to lie and not get caught. There is literally no margin for error because as soon as one mistake is made and something bad gets past a screener, the entire system nationwide (eg. the TSA in the United States) is blamed, cursed, and made to look incompetent. It's virtually a lose-lose situation.
To assume that children, women, the elderly, or even handicapped persons should be treated and screened differently (eg. this can be read as "less thoroughly") would be like giving a terrorist the key to the cargo door of the airplane.
It's important to keep in mind though, this doesn't give the screeners and security personnel the right to be inhuman, condescending, and rude to their "customers." But I imagine it must be difficult to keep morale up when everyone is swearing at you as you check them. It will take a lot of sensitivity training, a lot of discretion, and a lot of gumption to be the ideal and perfect screener. And since being perfect isn't possible, we will continue to have many reports of airport screening horror stories.
I wonder if I'll regret what I write here in the future. I remember in 2003, after putting my bags through the x-ray machine and walking through the metal detector, that I was pulled aside by a screener and was double checked with a metal-detecting wand. I was a little huffy (siiiigh stupid teenage me) because it was only the zipper on my pants that triggered the secondary check.
Oh well.
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