Bullshit masquerading as security

I’m sitting in the Calgary airport waiting for a flight to Regina.  I flew over Regina about 4 hours ago on my way to Calgary from Hamilton but Westjet makes me go to Calgary if I want to get from Regina to Hamilton or vice versa.  Its worth the inconvenience in order to fly Westjet. 

Some alarm just went off in the airport.  It was a very alarming alarm but nobody seemed particularly concerned.  That should be cause for concern in itself.  We’re so used to hearing car alarms and door exit alarms go off that nobody really pays any attention to them anymore.  Someday that’s going to get some of us killed.  I ignored the door alarm at Richardsons many years ago and got yelled at by Bruce’s idiot son-in-law in front of the Bank of Montreal.  But I digress.

This airport alarm was accompanied by a flashing strobe light on the wall next to the handicapped washroom.  I think the location of the light was coincidence but some old fart of a rent-a-cop hustled off into the washroom anyway.  He came out alone.  Meanwhile I had visions of an imagined “security threat” which would eventually involve us having to re-clear so-called security screening.  Which of course would only serve to make my flight which is already late that much later.  Eventually somebody turned the alarm off and no explanation was offered.  I’ve said it many times before but it bears repeating:

As a species, homo sapiens is too stupid to survive.

I had steak and eggs for breakfast when I arrived here this morning and ate my steak with a steak knife.  On the airplane side of the “security” checkpoint.  Sometimes they give you plastic knives but not here.  And not that I think there is anything particularly wrong with eating a steak with a real knife.  Its just that if I showed up at the screening desk with …. Oh, I don’t know, maybe a knock-off Leatherman, they would freak out and immediately seize it.  As a matter of fact they did exactly that two weeks ago in St. Louis & I had to go buy a new fake Leatherman.  I doubt my flight home was any safer but I was out the price of a new knock-off.  At least Walmart benefitted. 

Next time you are on a layover and bored, wander through the gift shops and imagine how you could hijack an airliner with the merchandise on display.  That will require a certain amount of imagination but often not all that much imagination.  Imagination that is sorely lacking in the managerial ranks of air terminal operators.