The man had already made up his mind. Standing in line for the body scanner, he reached into his mouth, pulled out a tooth and dropped it in a bin all by itself. The TSA officer watching him started to say he did not need to do that, but the passenger had already taken it out, so she shrugged and went about her business. The tooth rolled along through the x-ray, and so did the passenger.
Fifteen or twenty minutes later, he found her on the other side of the checkpoint. “Oh, did you guys see a tooth?” The bin had long since been taken away. So the officer went through the bins, one after another, to help him find his one tooth. 20 bins later, she found it. Her parting advice: do not take out your teeth ever again.
That story comes from a roundup of checkpoint tales told by working TSA officers in a video from Travel + Leisure. The officers, with four to eight years on the job, share the strangest things they have seen, and a few things they wish every traveler knew.
The Strangest Things Through The Checkpoint
One officer recalls a microwave oven with a raw turkey or chicken inside. The passenger had a flight to catch, pulled the oven out of the wall and put it in a bag, then carried it through as if it were still cooking. She wondered what the traveler planned to do with it, since by the time they landed it would be spoiled.
Another officer remembers hearing screams from the back of a lane and watching the other officers step away. A man had a monkey head in his suitcase, in a wooden box wrapped in a towel wrapped in another towel. On the x-ray it looked like a skull. They called every agency they could, and people in suits showed up and shook their heads.
A smaller scene made another officer laugh. A man asked where to put his shoes, was told to put them in a bin, and so he set the bin on the floor and stepped into it with his shoes still on. The officers explained that the shoes needed to come off and go through the machine.
Animals Of Every Kind
The officers say pets cause some of their most memorable days. A cat got loose at one checkpoint, and everyone was missing their flight because nobody could catch it. A miniature horse came through the checkpoint one day. They treated it like any other animal, put it through the metal detector, swabbed its handlers’ hands, and the owners took plenty of photos.
Others have seen dogs that look like wolves, monkeys, parakeets and snakes. One officer remembers a small carnival-style fish bag and wondered how long the fish would last on the flight. Their advice about pets is firm: never put a pet through the x-ray machine. If your animal gets nervous when it is removed from its bag, ask for the private room. The officers say they can see the animal’s insides on the screen, which is unsettling for them, and by the time the image appears the animal is already in the radiation zone.
What Officers Wish You Knew
Several rules came up again and again.
- Liquids, makeup and lotions must be 3.4 ounces or smaller. A closed water bottle is not an exception.
- If you want to bring water, freeze the bottle and send it through in a separate tray. One officer says the theory is that you cannot make something go boom with something frozen.
- Replica guns and toy water guns are treated as real guns, and bags shaped like brass knuckles are not allowed. Ninja stars are weapons, even if people treat them as props.
- Plush toys filled with weighted beads get a second look nine times out of ten, as does baby formula, simply because officers have to double-check.
- Passengers can travel with vapes. Officers say TSA does not care what you are vaping, but they ask people to stop putting other substances in them.
Their rule of thumb, one officer explains, is “trust, but verify.” If she took everyone’s word that those were just shoes in the x-ray, she says, the checkpoint would not work.
More Quirks From The Line
One officer asks travelers to stop putting headphones in their shoes. Another asks parents to stop placing babies in the bin. They put their kids in the bin to get their shoes off, she says, and the officers are scared by it. Children and adults on the standard line often do not need to remove shoes at all, but some passengers insist, so the officers eventually say fine, everybody’s shoes off.
A traveler with a gun in his bag gave a different surprise. As soon as officers spotted it, he told them his wife had put it there. The officer said she would have divorced him on the spot, because it was his bag.
When officers find prohibited items, some toss them straight in the trash in front of the passenger. One says she “soccer throws” the item into the garbage, even if it is expensive. She says anything unidentified is not worth the risk of keeping.
Not So Mean After All
The officers are quick to push back on the biggest misconception about their jobs: that they come to work to be mean and yell at people. One says the tone comes from repeating the same instructions all day and watching people still get them wrong. Another says 75 to 95 percent of her colleagues are there either for the paycheck or because they genuinely care about travelers. A lot of them see their grandmothers, mothers, sisters and nephews in the faces coming through the lane, and they want everyone to reach a plane safely.
They are also tested frequently, weekly and sometimes daily, to keep them on their toes. One officer says that when she applied, it was just a job, but training turned it into a passion. Her message for travelers is easy to remember: it is okay to talk to them. They may seem stern at a glance, but a friendly word helps.
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