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TSA Keeps the Change

Kip Hawley - TSA Administrator

How much can I possibly hate the Totally Stupid Administration? Every time I start to think that I’ve hit rock bottom with this agency, and there’s nowhere to go but up, I hear about another moronic program or initiative that forces me to re-examine the depths of hatred that my soul is capable of.

Today’s story about the spare change that the TSA collects in the gray screening bins after passengers leave it behind helped me reach another dark spiritual epiphany.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has collected — and kept — more than $1 million in the past three years from airline passengers who forget coins at checkpoints.

Coins are left by passengers who are either too rushed to bother collecting their change or too color-blind to see it, the TSA says.

“The money blends in with a lot of the gray bins we’re utilizing,” said Earl Morris, TSA security chief at Salt Lake City International Airport, which collected $6,317 from 2004 to 2007.

Here’s an idea morons – when you see that someone is leaving his change behind, WARN HIM.

Or are the fingers you’re using to pick your noses too big to see around?

I hate how the agency is aware of this, but does nothing to address the problem. Instead, they quasi-intimate that they like you to leave the coins behind to help the “defray security costs,” whatever that means. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t our taxes already pay all of those costs? What costs are there to defray that TSA employees are being asked to ante-up to cover? This is BS. “Defray security costs” must be TSA code for “employee ice cream party.” As the article points out, the $1.05 million they’ve collected over two years isn’t even a scratch in the $18 billion costs over the same time period, so it must be an ice cream party that they’re keeping the money for.  One hell of a sweet ice cream party.

The cash leader: Los Angeles International Airport, where passengers left behind $89,375 from Sept. 30, 2004 to Oct. 1, 2007, according to TSA reports. Las Vegas’ McCarran International was a distant runner-up.

The cash laggard: Chattanooga (Tenn.) Metropolitan Airport, whose 300,000 departing passengers in 2007 left just $1.20.

Biggest underachiever: New York’s Kennedy International Airport, the nation’s sixth-busiest, which generated just $5,228 from 2004 to 2007, including a mere $607 last year.

I don’t know who I want to crush for this, the idiot TSA employee who probably refers to airports that don’t generate lots of revenue as “underachievers” and “laggards,” or the brain dead reporter who didn’t have the sack to ask why it would be a bad thing for the TSA to never collect any change, ever. My vote is that both of them are losers.

But the TSA takes the coins seriously, equipping each of its 800 airport checkpoints with a locked container for screeners to deposit cash. Checkpoint managers store the cash each day in an airport safe. Large airports deposit the cash into a local bank every 90 days, or when the amount in the safe reaches $300.

The TSA has fired screeners for keeping change, including one “terminated for theft of a nickel and two pennies,” TSA spokeswoman Sterling Payne said. “TSA takes the handling of any passenger items, whether left voluntarily or involuntarily, very seriously.”

I hammer the TSA all the time. On this site, we’ve specifically hammered them for being thieves, so what I’m about to say may come as a surprise, but I think it’s ridiculous to fire someone for pocketing 7 cents. How much did it take to hire and train that goon? What a wise investment - to turn around and fire him for taking one tenth the cost of a candy bar that no one wants.

It’s not like he stopped the person at the screening, had them empty their pockets into his hands and deposited the contents into his own pockets in front of the victim. This is idiotic. I’m all about government employees and organizations trying to be fiscally responsible, but this is a bit much. Have the funds we’ve collected even paid for the costs of the safes, the training on how to account for the money and what to do with it, or the paperwork required for this program? Probably not.

Who cares if a TSA employee keeps a dime nobody wants? If this is what qualifies as a fringe benefit for these burger flippers, let them have at it. As the article points out, most travelers are in too much of a hurry to care.

It would be one thing if they were deceptively trying to steal your money, it would be yet another if you came back 30 seconds later asking for your thirteen cents and everyone shrugged their shoulders while avoiding eye contact, whistling, and not-so-subtly trying to hide the new cold soda they just bought with their illicit gains behind the x-ray machine. But that’s not what happened here. This kind of harsh treatment reminds me of an organization with different initials – the SS.

The difference between other items left behind and money is that the former is usually unique and of some personal value while the latter is not. If I leave behind my cell phone, no one would doubt that it is a little different than 50 cents. If some woman leaves behind her earrings that her grandmother gave her, that is also worth more than a few pennies. No one is going to come back looking for loose change though. When I leave my change behind, I assume it’s gone – and I usually assume the passenger behind me took it. Which brings up an interesting dilemma – what are these clowns supposed to do if the passenger behind notices the change and goes to take it, but the TSA employee knows it doesn’t belong to him? Is he supposed to detain someone over a nickel that belongs to someone else?  If not, why not let the screener take it himself?

I’m sure the TSA manual probably calls for an offender in this situation to get sent to a special room for “extra screening” without his clothes.

The TSA isn’t concerned because employees are pocketing your dimes and nickels, they’re concerned because employees are pocketing their dimes and nickels. That’s what those coins become when you walk away from that grey bin. This is about the TSA getting their cut, and they don’t like their employees holding out on them. Here’s another way to evaluate their concern for “your belongings” – how would you go about reclaiming your seven cents? If you land in Rome and realize you left it behind, how would you get it back? Your personal belongings probably go into some lost and found so you can claim them later, but your money goes into a TSA bank account. I would be willing to bet the change in my pocket that if you walked back to reclaim your change ten minutes after you realized you left it behind, you would find that it had already been deposited into “the safe,” and you would get the run around until you gave up. After all, how would they verify that it’s yours? How would they prevent any random person from coming up to ask for an obscure amount of small change just to cover a phone call or the other half of a BigMac? They would have no way to know if you legitimately left change behind, or you were trying to put one over on them, and so I bet they wouldn’t give you the money.

I’ve got a better idea – get rid of the entire worthless outfit. Then no one will leave any change behind ever again, and we won’t have to worry about any “security costs” that aren’t going to make us safe from anything.

Unfortunately, our gutless politicians can’t terminate the new jobs program they’ve created, so we can only reasonably expect something else. Here are two other ideas – a color for the bins that doesn’t look the same color as money – shouldn’t be too hard, money only comes in two colors. If that’s too much, how about a simple “need a penny, take a penny” bowl? I see those all over the place, and I don’t often see some greedy pig dump the entire contents into his pocket. Then when an old man comes back looking for his change, he can take it right out without interrupting everything. If no one collects it by the end of the day, divide up the two dollars that the airport collected between the employees and send them on their way to the soda machine so they can share two candy bars.

Don’t fire anyone else for something this stupid – you clowns have enough serious problems to worry about. Stop cutting off your nose to spite your face.