September 21, 2011 5:27 pm
The Uncomfortable:
A friend, Chris, regaled me with a story of his recent encounter with Airport Security…
“I was going through security on my way to… somewhere, and one of the guards looks at my ticket and said, ‘It’s your lucky day! You’ve been randomly flagged… follow me!’ He took me over by this ‘machine’. He then put on some rubber gloves and pulled out a napkin and these ‘special tongs’. He rubs this little doily on my hands and puts it into the machine. So I’m just standing there, minding my own business… (You can’t small talk with these people because they have all of these ‘behavioral experts’ watching your every move!) So right as I look down at this machine, this loud buzzer goes off [ANNNG ANNNG ANNNG!) and the word EXPLOSIVES pops up in bright red on the screen! The guard gets serious and says,
‘Come with me.’
Then all these TSA agents start coming out and I’m like, ‘Explosives… Wow!’ The agent leads me away from the general security area and I say,
What about my stuff!’
He says, ‘Oh you won’t be needing that!’
So I follow them into a room… and they shut the door. ‘Do I get a phone call?’ So I take everything out of my pockets… He then explains he is going to give me a ‘pat-down’. And he’s putting on more rubber gloves; these shiny, blue ones.
I’m going to give you a pat-down!’
As he’s explaining that he’s going to give me a pat-down, he looks kind of fired up about it!
‘We’re gonna start in the back… We’re checking your ankles; checking your ankles. We’re checking your calves; checking your calves.’ And he is narrating the whole time! I’m thinking, ‘You don’t need to narrate I can feel what you’re doing!’
At this point he is kind of embarrassed and finishes checking my arm pits and says,
‘Well, you’re free to go!’
I never did find out why my hands had ‘Explosives’ on them…”
New procedures like “randomly flagged intensive security inspections” are all part of the Homeland Security Act. Luckily, all are not as pointless and strange as the case above… At Jericho, we run extensive Homeland Security Background checks & substance screening on all of our employees.
The Bad:
These background checks and screenings cost quite a bit of money… but you guys are worth it.
The Good:
The Homeland Security Background Check ensures that none of our employees have had a single felony in their entire lives. Both the safety of our customers and our employees is chief among our concerns. Although we don’t go quite as far as putting on shiny blue gloves and checking the armpits and ankles of our installers… we come pretty close.