Irony, TSA-Style

Air travel never ceases to amaze me.  In San Diego this afternoon, I'm getting ready to get on a plane going through all of the usual preflight rituals.  As I'm participating in this, the one thing that seems to consistently work in the air travel world, there are two things that get my mind cranking.

The lady checking our IDs and boarding passes has a name tag that says Sarin.  I'm sure that's her name, but I've got to confess it is a bit unnerving to look at the name tag of someone who is supposed to be protecting your security and read "Sarin."

Again, and I can't make this kind of thing up, there's a song playing somewhat loudly from the PA. It's about 1PM, and I'm pretty sure Muzak is running the "wake me up from my giant lunch" playlist, so we've got something peppy.  Hmm... 80s.   Funk/Disco.  Gap Band, yeah, definitely Gap Band.  I start tracking the lyrics... "you dropped a bomb on me...baby...you dropped a bomb on me." The only thing dropping in that TSA line was my jaw.

I truly hope this was someone's well-planned joke.  It was funny -- right in line with my sense of humor.  I needed the laugh this time as my bag was disassembled and given a good swabbing by a congenial TSA agent, whose name might have been Steve.

Guerilla marketers take note: you may want to pay TSA agents to pump your technology as they take apart peoples bags.  "Hey, how do you like the new iPod Nano?  I had one, really liked it, but got super-sick of iTunes.  I love my new Zune...check it out!  Next time you come through, I'll share a tune with you wirelessly.  Looks good, you can put your stuff back now."