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The Great Midwest Corkscrew Affair
McCumber asks, "Does taking a wine corkscrew through an airport constitute a national security threat?"The Latest from SIW
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By John McCumber
Security Technology & Design
I won't bother to tell you why my wife and I ended up stuck in Cleveland , OH , over the weekend. It's a long story. It was now Sunday morning. I grabbed the local newspaper placed at the door to our room and perused it while we sipped coffee and waited for our breakfast to come in the nearly empty hotel restaurant. I was surprised at what I saw.
Right on the front page was what the editors obviously felt was a major news item. The Transportation Security Administration was once again going to allow airline passengers to carry nail files and grooming scissors aboard their flights. I was pleasantly surprised. I had already had at least a dozen small scissors confiscated, since I tended to leave them in the well-traveled shaving case that goes to the gym with me every workday morning.
As I read through the article, I chuckled at the numerous quotes used to flesh out the piece. Some were from airline passengers who were concerned with the potential for lax enforcement, and another batch was from posturing politicians. It seemed no one who had flown more than once felt uncomfortable espousing an opinion.
However, my favorite bit of feedback was a blast of condemnation directed at the TSA by the flight attendants' union. They were dead set against any change in the current policy and even suggested cracking down on other potentially dangerous items they would be pleased to enumerate. From my recent travel experiences, I suspect most flight attendants would prefer the flying public be stripped to their underwear, cuffed wrist and ankle, and duct taped into their coach-class seats for the duration of every flight.
Later that day, after a fun few hours at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we decided to wander back to the hotel, order some room service, and enjoy the late football game. On the way back, we noticed the wine shop was closed, so we stepped into a 24-hour drug store to pick up a bottle.
As we approached the counter, a sleepy-eyed teenager in a corporate smock looked at our purchase and said he would have to get the manager to ring us up since we had, in the local parlance, AL-key-haul. I looked down at the $18 bottle of wine and suddenly felt like some desperate booze hound demanding the jug be slipped into a form-fitting paper bag.
The short delay sparked my thought processes. Since we had traveled by air, we would have to rely on the hotel to provide us a corkscrew. This would present an opportunity for the hotel to charge us a corking fee. Yes, this has happened to me before, and the fee was a princely $10. It would also allow another weekend employee to sneer and make me feel like a desperate booze hound, drinking on the Lord's Day, no less.
