That’s a pretty cold take. It’s super obvious honestly. I have never ever stood in a giant crowd snaking as tightly as possible around in front of security walking past trash cans people are dropping stuff in normally and naturally, and not felt like I was not in a meaningful amount of danger. And then the experience ends with a man patting my junk.
Yeah no. At this point we’ve all collectively wasted enough time to lose a jet to a terrorist attack every other year and come out ahead.
I hate crowds in general unless I’m somewhere with really good security. The airport in general I’m not in love with, but the security line is the nut low.
I don’t think “The TSA sucks” is a hot take, but I think “Let airlines do their own security,” is scorching hot. We’ve already got landing gears falling off, and people think airlines are so bad at moving their luggage around that experienced travelers hate checking bags if they can avoid it.
I don’t want to find out how Spirit pinches pennies on security, or what happens when Karen loses her shit because she can’t bring her concealed snub nose pistol on a flight, or members with status are allowed to take their 2A privileges airborne as long as they haven’t shot anyone yet.
The TSA is 90% Kabuki theatre and 8% trainwreck, but I’m pretty sure the 2% that actually works is worth not outsourcing to CEOs who will go ask McKinsey how to maximize their bottom line on security.
I feel like TSA is one of the least bothersome aspects of flying.
Have any on you all tried checking a bag with spirit recently? You check in at the kiosk like usual and then when you go drop bag instead of an agent looking at ID and taking there a huge ass line so you can set it on a machine which fails to read its code for 5 minutes, then the machine tries to scan your ID for 5 minutes, then you have to crouch for facial recognition and then finally an agent comes over anyway to hit some manual over ride button so you got a 30 second interaction taking 10 minutes and still required a human. Absolute shitshow
Yeah, at this point if someone tries to charge me some kind of convenience fee I pay it, and then reassess if there isn’t a better value being offered somewhere else. This has been disastrous for chain restaurants of all types I can tell you that. I may never go to one again. Not the convenience fee necessarily just the pricing choices.
We’re watching capitalism eat itself in real time. These big brands are busy trying to see how shitty they can make the customer experience… yeah that might work in airlines I guess. But airlines have historically been terrible businesses, so…
Prior to 2001 we had 50 years of airlines effectively “doing their own security” and things were fine. Seriously, reinforced cockpit doors alone would have been enough to prevent September 11th.
I’m starting to think that, much like people who lived through the Great Depression spent the rest of their lives with some cash under their mattress, we’re going to see a lot of Millennials and Gen Z doing way more home cooked meals the rest of their lives than they had been.
We’re getting to the point where the quality vs cost proposition on eating out is getting preposterous unless it’s either street food or fine dining. $17 for a footlong at Subway? Go fuck yourself!
Prior to 2001, did Boeing make planes that fell apart in the sky? Every publicly traded company is in a cycle of raising prices and cutting costs to squeeze out the max profit the consumer will bear. If this gets privatized by the airlines, we’re going to find out just how hard it is to fuck up maintaining metal detectors or body scanners.
Follow up questions:
Prior to 2001, how many mass shootings were there? (Columbine was 1999 as a point of reference)
Prior to 2001, what percentage of Americans were keen on overthrowing the democracy via violent force?
Just a couple of the first, “how could this go wrong” things that popped into my mind.
In reality, my prediction would be that the airlines came together to contract the security out to a new company. That company would be complete dogshit in quality, but very cheap. If/when it went bad and something awful happened, the company would go out of business and a new one would spring to life that would be similarly dogshit in quality, similarly cheap, and have a clean brand. Rinse and repeat. The security companies would be positioned as if their purpose was to provide good security in airports, but in reality their purpose would be to shield the airlines from the PR of mass shootings and terror attacks due to security failures while they went cheap-as-fuck on security.
There’s some dumb stuff with TSA (that 4th ounce of lube is gonna bring the plane down for sure), but I also don’t really think it’s that bad. But then again I’m like 50 for 50 on not getting my genitals fondled, so maybe I just run hot. edit or cold???
I’m still eating out a lot but this is already me with delivery. I remember 10 years ago I moved into an apartment with a bunch of security features (gated neighborhood, key fob access to building) and I noted how horrible it was for as much as I got food delivered. I’ve cut that out entirely now though. I’ll pick up my own food before paying $20 between delivery fees and app fees and tips.
It takes too long, and they’re not efficient enough at reducing the Kabuki theatre when the lines build up. It’s also setting up very predictable soft targets in airports constantly and I’m shocked there’s never been a mass shooting or terror attack on that mass of humanity stuck in line. I don’t love flying, but I’m still way more uncomfortable from a safety perspective standing in that line than I am during takeoff and landing.
Food delivery is like the perfect late stage capitalism exhibition. Everyone hates it. Restaurants, drivers and end users all straight up hate these companies!
Yeah we get delivery once or twice a year if that, entirely because of the impact of inflation on both the food and the delivery. I’d say, excluding using comps in a casino, probably around 1% or 2% of our meals are restaurant/fast food. And even on those, we’re pretty cost conscious by necessity. I prefer Subway to WaWa sandwiches, but after not getting either for probably 6-7 months, things got crazy recently and I was going to pick up a quick dinner a couple times. The first time I went to Subway, and was shell shocked by the price. Second time I would have preferred Subway, but WaWa is literally around 50% cheaper… which btw also tells you what a rip off Subway is.
The roast beef sandwich at WaWa easily has twice as much meat and the same amount of cheese as the Subway sub. Less bread, less lettuce/onion. Costs half as much. So it’s got twice as much of the most expensive part, and costs half as much. Subway is fucking around, and they’re probably going to find out over the next couple years. Especially given that it’s impossible for anyone to forget that footlongs were $5 not that long ago. They’ve tripled in price! It simply has to be “greedflation.”
For all the talk in this country of how incredibly intelligent and important business owners are, I’m deeply disappointed in their complete failure to push back on this and cut DoorDash out of their businesses.
Subway’s problem is that its economics stopped making sense in the early 00’s. They held off letting the franchisees raise prices off that 5 bucks for about a decade too long and it made a pretty bad business significantly worse.
They just overdid expansion massively in the 90’s basically… and it’s just a mediocre sandwich chain.