JFK’s Terminal 4 was shut down for more than two hours yesterday following an incident that resulted from a poorly trained TSA agent accidentally saying “please” when asking a passenger to remove his shoes.
“I knew something wasn’t right when the guy failed to say anything about my garden rake,” said the passenger involved, Bob Payne, a yard equipment salesman from Pelham, New York.
Then, when the agent politely asked Payne to remove his shoes he said he was so shocked he involuntarily cried out, not realizing how much it would upset the chicken that the man behind him had in his carry-on, or that the drug-sniffing dogs would go after the chicken so aggressively.
“I can tell you all hell broke loose,” Payne said, “with just random passengers, including one old lady in a wheelchair, wrestling to the ground anyone who looked suspicious to them.”
A TSA supervisor on the scene said security experts were able to instantly run a background check on the agent involved, and discovered he’d been on the job less than a week. The check revealed, too, that he had previously worked distributing The Watchtower magazine for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. ”And sources tell us that’s a group notorious for programming its people to be polite to every member of the public.”
The supervisor said the agent had been put on administrative leave until he could be more thoroughly trained in proper TSA procedures. “He should be back at work by this afternoon,” the supervisor said.
In other news at JFK, a cash–strapped organization that looks after the health and welfare of airport employees announced it finally had the resources to hold the raffle they’d been planning for months. The prize, an organization spokesperson said, would be a chicken.
