The Air Up There

During a recent cross-country flight, I reluctantly discovered that the feet of the woman seated next to me smelled remarkably like Parmesan cheese.

I say “reluctantly” because this was not knowledge that I sought. Rather, it wafted into my awareness just prior to take-off for our four-hour flight from San Jose, California to Chicago, Illinois.

It wasn’t a pleasant smell. You know how certain cheeses – like blue and sharp varieties – can smell a little bit like vomit? It was that smell. And despite attempting to aim my tiny overhead blower full force to intercept the smell of her cheese feet, the stink was persistent. It would not be denied.

Parmesan Cheese feet...in the flesh

Shoeless Section?

This caused me to consider a question that I’ll admit I’m grappling with: Should planes enforce a “shoes on” policy? Or, perhaps, should they provide those passengers who want to remove their shoes with other accommodations. For example, what about a “shoes off” section that hearkens back to the smoking sections of the past? Or perhaps include some floral scented “Foot Refresher” wipes in the seat-back next to the barf bag.

Planes, I realize, already have lots of rules. Generally this is a good thing given that these sleek craft soar to 35,000 feet in the air and reach speeds of over 500 miles per hour all while carrying hundreds of people crammed together in a relatively small space.

Rules keep us all safe and provide for an orderly, reasonably comfortable experience while flying. But in considering this potential “shoes on” rule, I will highlight the “relatively small space” part of my description of air travel.

Planes are tight. Just recently I read that Boeing’s new big innovation is to make the bathrooms on their planes smaller so that they can cram in as many as 14 more seats. Seriously? How can an airplane bathroom get any smaller? Perhaps airlines and their respective investors will love this innovation, but I can guarantee passengers will not.

Right to Clean (non-smelly) Air

Flights can be difficult, especially long ones. People have the right to be comfortable. But do they have the right to make themselves comfortable while making others uncomfortable? When we’re in a plane, we’re all breathing the same stale, recycled air, so bad smells tend to not go unnoticed. In fact, they’re amplified.

Now, the odor from Ms. Cheese Feet lady was bad, but it was tolerable. However, the experienced conjured up a difficult travel-related memory from the past that I’ve worked hard to forget. It also involved a woman’s feet on a plane.

It was a flight from Atlanta to Chicago, a route I’d taken hundreds of times. I was working as a consultant, living on the road 5 days a week. Hotels, restaurant food and air travel were part of my routine. I was a nomad of sorts, but it’s how I made a living. This life, however, was nearly snuffed out abruptly by the absolute nastiest foot odor I’d ever encountered in my life.

The woman barely made the plane. Unfortunately for me, she slipped on board just as the door was about to close. As I recall, a ruckus arose at the front of the plane and out of a hazy Pig-Pen-like cloud emerged a disheveled, wild-eyed middle-aged woman who promptly stumbled down the aisle and dropped into the vacant aisle seat next to me.

Her odor arrived a few seconds before she did physically. To grasp this smell, close your eyes and image you’re resting your nose in the center of a large ashtray overfilled with cigarette butts. On the bottom of the ashtray is a small puddle of cheap whiskey.

Defensively, I initiated immediate mouth breathing, but it was only partially successful. As much as I tried not to, I could actually taste this woman’s barroom odor. But it got worse quickly. She took her shoes off.  

As she slipped off a pair of sandal-like shoes that had a thick black band across the top, she exhaled a raspy “Oh, yeah, that’s much better,” to us surrounding passengers. She rubbed her puffy, chapped feet together. Her toenails were cracked and discolored, looking remarkably like Fritos corn chips.

I caught the vomit in my mouth before it made it past my lips. Thank God. To say that an evil green cloud swirled menacingly over her feet would be an exaggeration and somewhat inaccurate, but it would convey to you the absolute toxic, landfill-like stench that arose from her feet, seeped into our row, enveloped my head and nearly rendered me unconscious.

Surviving the Scent

Could she not smell this? The bigger question: How could I survive a two-hour flight to Chicago? That would be impossible. As I considered my options, it got worse. The plane stopped and the captain informed us Chicago’s O’Hare Airport was under ground stop. We’d be sitting for a while – most likely an hour.

My only move was to find another seat. I quickly spotted one several rows back, frantically collected my things and – despite the seatbelt sign being illuminated – darted past the woman and claimed my new seat. I am quite certain I saved my own life.

A Boeing 747 

Odor Sensor?

Perhaps an odor sensor should be on planes. It would be a button up above each seat in between the air vent and the flight attendant call button. Maybe it has the picture of a nose. The button both lights up and has a shameful sounding buzz to indicate that in this specific seat “conditions have developed that make the air unpleasant and unsafe.” The uncomfortable peer pressure this would create might preemptively thwart future barefoot offenders.

Now, I realize airplane farters – and you know who you are – will object to this. They seem to think it’s their inalienable right to fart at 30,000 feet. They would no doubt scoff at installing what I like to call the “seat siren”.

I will admit that any odor sensing device may prove complicated for those with generally bad hygiene or, for example, the hoodie and basketball shorts wearing man child next to me on another recent flight who snarfed down a foot-long salami sub before we took off then promptly fell asleep and proceeded to exhale vile half digested garlic salami breath in my direction for a full hour as we soared over Arkansas, Missouri and into southern Illinois.

I certainly realize this is an uphill battle and not one I’m likely to win. I understand. All of us humans are flawed. We do many wonderful things, but our feet tend to smell at the end of a long day.

I would just implore my fellow travelers that before you slip off your loafers ask yourself a few questions:

Are my feet currently capable of rendering someone unconscious? Might they smell like cheese? Am I in my living room at home on my couch – eating Pringles and watching “Golden Girls” reruns? Or am I in a public space – like a plane – where it’s possible I might be offending someone with my intensely foul smell?

I think if you answer these questions honestly, we’ll all be better off...together...in the air up there.

A Lousy Week for the U.S. Government

Let’s just say the U.S. Government had a bad week. We’ve all had those, right?

It starts when you rip your pants on the car door handle. Then you space out and overdraw your checking account and get hit with fees. Then, to cap it off, you accidentally hit “reply all” on an email and mock an annoying co-worker who is copied in the cc: field.

Well, the federal government had one of those weeks last week. It was a doozy, a trifecta of sorts: TSA incompetence, an epic hack attack and a multi-billion dollar disability bombshell.

Here’s a quick recap.

Monday June 1 – Transportation “Insecurity” Administration

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson 

Tests run at dozens of airports across the U.S. show that the Transportation Security Administration failed to detect weapons, bombs and others items not well suited for air travel 95% of the time. Yes, that’s correct – of the 70 tests run by investigators, the TSA whiffed on a whopping 67 of them.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Chief Jeh Johnson was furious. He reassigned TSA Administrator Melvin Carraway and issued a series of six directives to “enhance our security capabilities and techniques.” Among other things, his directives included more training, revising existing procedures and re-testing equipment.

Thursday June 4 – OMG, Hacking the OPM

The federal government let us know that back in December of last year, hackers broke into the computer system of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and made off with personal data from about 4 million current and former federal employees.  The U.S. says that China did this. China, not surprisingly, denied involvement. The dialogue in the press last week – akin to what you’d expect from two six-year- olds on a school play lot – sounded something like this:

US Gov: You hacked us.

China: No we didn’t.

U.S Gov: Yes, you did.

China: No we didn’t.

US Gov: Liar.

China: I know you are, but what am I?

US Gov: Shut up.

China: You shut up.

Sunday June 7 – A Billion Here, a Billion There…

The results of a 10-year study show that Social Security overpaid half of the people receiving disability benefits to the tune of $17 billion over the last decade. In addition to overpaying people, the study found that the agency was paying people who were dead or in prison.

Apparently the agency was able to recover about half of this money. That’s good news. The bad news, however, is that unless Congress does something different, the trust fund that supports the disability program will run out of cash in the final 3 months of 2016, leaving only enough payroll taxes to fund 81% of the current benefits. I acknowledge that some might not see this as “bad news” per se.

A Tangled Web

Now, clearly, these are three separate and distinct issues that coincidentally happened to come to light during the span of one week. And, as we’ve established, it was a bad week. It wouldn’t necessarily serve much of a purpose to scrutinize or over-hype these events.

Nonetheless, I do have a few comments.  And I’d like to steal a page from DHS Secretary Johnson and his six-part directive and provide six observations to consider.

1. An Allen Wrench – On Tuesday June 2, I traveled from Chicago to San Jose California. The prior day in Chicago was beautiful, so I opted to set up my patio furniture on my back deck.  This involved using an Allen wrench (aka hex key) to secure the 4 legs of my outdoor table. When I finished, I put the wrench in my back pocket. 

My Allen wrench - aka hex key

The next day, yes, I wore the same pants. Despite the “take everything out of your pockets” refrain from the blue-gloved TSA agent, I did not. I forgot about the light, thin Allen wrench. The screening agent caught it, though. During a pat down procedure that he skillfully executed on my right buttock, he found the offending wrench and politely scolded me for having it. Guilty as charged.

The lesson: Given the 5% success rate from the tests revealed the day before, apparently you’re likely to have more success with guns, explosives and other bad stuff if you’re boarding a plane than if you’re carrying a small wrench capable of perhaps tightening a loose tray table. Good to know.

2. Twelve and a Half Days – Since 2001, I calculated I’ve taken about 600 flight segments. If I estimate a 30-minute wait per visit in the TSA line, we’re talking 18,000 minutes, which is 300 hours or, roughly 12 ½ entire days of my life. When you’re waiting, of course, you’re telling yourself this is for safety. It’s a sacrifice, but you’re willing to make it because, well, you don’t want to die. Now given the TSA’s razor-thin success rate, it’s harder to feel like these have been days well spent. 

Clarification: Despite these 12 ½ days in TSA captivity, just one clarifying question though: Is it OK if I bring water through the scanner? I just don’t quite get that yet.

3. Homeland Bound – DHS Secretary Jeh (pronounced “Jay”) Johnson has had an impressive career as a lawyer, Assistant U.S. Attorney General in New York, General Counsel for the Department of the Air Force under President Bill Clinton and also for the Department of Defense under President Barack Obama. 

Are we, in fact, "secure"?

Interestingly, he was born on September 11, 1957. You might say given his current position and trajectory of his career, he was born to lead the Department of Homeland Security, a 200,000 person, nearly $100 billion government agency created after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. It’s sort of poetic in a way. 

You could, however, also make the opposite argument. Granted, the TSA is just one of 7 agencies under the DHS, but given evidence that it appears to be shockingly inept Secretary Johnson and his team might actually be giving new life, as it were, to terrorists everywhere. These anti-US folks must be feeling reborn, in a way, to hear this report. Here they were cooking up elaborate schemes to do harm to the U.S. when all they really need to do is put whatever weapon they’ve created in their carry-on bag. Who knew?

4. Viable Reassignment Options – TSA Administrator Melvin Carraway has been reassigned in the wake of the scandalous report. The decision as to where to assign him is clearly out of my hands. I’d just offer two points: 

First, don’t consider the Social Security Administration. Given the multi-billion-dollar bloodletting, it appears they are full up on sub-standard administration techniques at the moment. Maybe reapply in 6-12 months.

Second, avoid the part of the DHS that is investigating the recent OPM hackings that allegedly came from China. It appears that the OPM did not even know about the hacking until April 2015, so clearly a review of their procedures is going to take someone with good investigative and observation skills.

Finding hackers is not easy. You are searching for nameless, faceless programmers on the other side of the world who are most likely hiding behind sophisticated networks, complex software and intelligent encryption techniques. I don’t think a guy whose department cannot successfully execute a simple pat down procedure to find a mock plastic explosive strapped between the shoulder blades of the man whose name they know and who is standing directly in front of them would actually qualify. 

5. Valuable Data – The hackers who broke into the OPM computers took social security numbers as well as data on job assignments data, performance ratings and training information. Tip to the hackers: The SSN info will likely net you the most cash on the market. If you stumbled onto any TSA personnel data, I’d disregard the performance rating and training information. Clearly it’s of little to value other than perhaps comic value. 

6. Pay for Performance – The TSA budget was about $7.4 billion in 2014. It employs 47,000 Transportation Security Officers and pays them roughly between $25,000 and $39,000 a year. Recently, test results appeared to expose the fact that the work these individuals do is ineffective, so you could say we’re essentially paying them for nothing. We pay them for security, but we’re still getting 95% insecurity. 

Disability payments certainly are a whole different ball of wax. These are individuals, who, for a wide range of reasons, are unable to work.  Many people argue that the definition of “disability” is both suspect and inconsistent. But aside from that claim, it appears easier at this point to defend the average annual payments of $14,000 to a person on federal disability than the much higher annual salaries to Transportation Security Officers.

Those are my observations for what was undoubtedly a troubling, forgettable week for the U.S. Government. And you’ll notice that in all of this I didn’t even mention former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, an Illinois Republican and current man of the hour.  

Here is a man – appearing in a federal court today in Chicago – who was once two heart beats from the Presidency and is now facing charges of violating banking rules and then lying to the FBI. Law enforcement sources and the sister of a former student of Hastert allege the money was to hide past sexual abuse by Hastert when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach.

Oh, wait. Sorry. That was not last week. That news hit the prior week on May 28. My mistake.