I had never flown out of SFO this early. Six-twenty a.m. on a Friday. I didn’t need to be at the airport a whole hour-and-a-half before the flight, right? Especially since BART wasn’t running when I would have needed to leave. Still, I got a ride to the airport(thanks, Traci J.!) and arrived just after five. And the Southwest line was longer than I’d ever seen it, by two times at least. Who the hell flies this early? Where were they going? Why were there so many kids? Why do people take ridiculous strollers on planes? If your kids can walk, then they should walk. If they’re too small to walk very much, then carry them. If they’re too big to carry, then they’re big enough to walk on their own. If they’re not too big to carry but you just can’t carry them, then that’s kind of your problem because you chose to have kids. I know, I’m being mean. Anyway, the line went pretty quickly, and I would have made it through security with plenty of time, except the SFO rent-a-cops decided to give me attitude. Most airport security lines are staffed by TSA. I don’t particularly like TSA, but they’re better at their jobs than their private-sector counterparts, who exclusively staff SFO. I refuse to go through the nekkid-pictures machine, so I get patted down. I told the guy this, and he got angry at me because I had already put my shoes through the X-ray – actually, he grabbed them out of the bin and put them in. I sat and waited. They yelled, «Male opt-out!» It was very crowded. After seven minutes, I asked when I was going to be patted down. He told me to wait. It was so crowded, they started to allow people to walk through the metal detectors without going through the cancer-causing death box. I asked him whether I could go through the metal detector like these other people. «You chose to opt out,» he said. «That was your choice. We can’t unmake that choice for you.» «But you’re letting other people go through the metal detector,» I said. «Maybe you should make a better choice next time,» he said. Really? I asked another guy, who was standing there texting, whether he could get someone to pat me down. He told me to wait without looking up. I waited another four minutes. I asked the original guy again. He told me I had to wait. At this point, I started to get annoyed. «Really, you’re going to punish me because I’m opting out?» «If you want a quicker screening, you should request a supervisor,» he told me. «I’d like a supervisor.» «You have to ask someone else to ask for a supervisor,» he said. «I can’t ask for one.» I’m not making any of this up. Then someone came and patted me down. It took me twenty-seven minutes to get through security. I made it to the gate after my number was called. I was so tired that I slept through the entire flight, so that was fine. SFO sucks.
