The Case of the Missing SOPs

As much as we love to rail against the ineptitude of the CAS management, we have equal feelings when it comes to TSA. One must remember that the number one objective of any good bureaucrat is to maintain the status quo. A good bureaucrat starts his or her day thinking one thing: "What do I have to do to ensure that everything stays the same?" Because change can not only be frightening, it might also mean that it will require more work and effort on one's part. Which means that the good bureaucrat will do whatever in order to avoid change.  Not maintaining the status quo could potentially lead to opportunities of being terminated.

So what is the deal with the missing SOPs? It turns out that TSA HQ wants airports to lock down the access to SOPs and want a daily accounting of those SOPs. Being the good bureaucrat that Ed Gomez is, and don't let his grandfatherly facade fool you otherwise, he had to deal with this order from his bosses. Instead of making use of the several hundreds of thousands of tax payers' dollars that are spent every year on those TSA suits by giving them something to do, he opted to have them removed from all of the locations. Now that those books are in one central location, it's very easy to have a daily accounting for the SOPs. Simple, yes?

The next time you or or your STSO have a question about SOP and can not easily get an answer, you know who to blame.