I was in San Jose Airport, waiting at the security gate. All my carry-ons had already gone through the scanner and on the other side. However, because the line was really long, I was much behind my luggage’s progress.
While waiting, I start fumbling my pockets out of boredom. Then I found something: a liquid lip gloss. It’s a tiny bottle, like .5 oz, maybe. It had been sitting in my jacket pocket for god knows how long. I didn’t even realize it was there.
Being a good civilian, I how it to the guy at the security gate, and asked to have it put into one of those small containers that are used to put coins and wallets.
To my surprise, they would not let it through, because it’s not in a plastic bag. And because it was a busy day, they had run out of bags to give me. So now I am stuck.
I was so surprised. I thought the clear plastic bag was to put all liquids in one place for easy inspection. I mean, it made sense. Imagine if everyone had 6 or 7 small containers of liquids that were store all over the place. It’d be quite time consuming to find each and everyone of them and exam. However, this is one single lip glass, and I had already pulled it out in clear view.
I tried to reason with the security but he wouldn’t budge. Insisted that the only way I can carry this lip gloss on was to put it in my carry-on bag, and CHECK THE BAG IN.
I so was not going to do a whole check in just for 1 lousy lip gloss, so I was going to toss it and buy a new one at the destination. At this point, the gentleman in front of me, who had been eating a vending machine sandwich and listening to this whole fiasco, took his sandwich out and gave me the plastic bag that was wrapping the sandwich, complete with the bread crumbs and all. I put the lip gloss into the bag, and now I am through, free and clear.
Seriously????? I guess somewhere in the security handbook it’s documented that a half-used bottle of lip gloss will not detonate if it’s in a sandwich bag. DOH!!!!!!