Security theater for corporate profits is total bullcrap.
Does it? It’s not like they have to hire someone extra, they just call up someone from the crew that walks over as slowly as they possibly can, and projects as much attitude as they possibly can. That agent’s highlight of the day would be making opt-outers wait.
This is a bit of a bizarre argument. Do you think the crew is made up of volunteers? Do you think the number of crew members somehow isn't determined in part by the throughput of tasks crew members are needed to perform? I'm not even sure what you think is going on here.
> that walks over as slowly as they possibly can, and projects as much attitude as they possibly can. That agent’s highlight of the day would be making opt-outers wait.
That's never been my experience in like 20ish flights since TSA started irradiating people. I know the agent isn't the problem, and I treat them as the human being doing their job that they are, and the entire thing goes by like the routine waste of time that it is.
I think you might be taking the agents' reactions more personally than they are intended: I'm sure that the TSA agents aren't necessarily happy because you're adding a task to their plate, and in busy airports they already have a lot going on, so it's understandably visible that they're stressed. But every one I've interacted with has kept it more professional than an eye roll.
Remember, the agents themselves are just not-all-that-well-paid workers. They aren't the cause of the problem.
They usually make sure that they know which of my shoes and carry-ons is going through that separate scanner so I can pick it up after. I end up waiting at most a minute for a male (because I am male) TSA agent to come over and do the pat down. Before they do the patdown, they explain what they're going to do; I believe this explanation is standardized and memorized, though I haven't gone through word for word and checked that. Afterward they'll either swab my some area of my clothes, or (more often) swab the nitrile gloves they patted me down with, and put it in what I assume is a spectrometer to check for chemicals. Twice, the person doing the pat down was a trainee, so the pat down was observed by a trainer and the trainer asked me a few questions, like if I felt the trainee had used too much pressure during the patdown. At that point I'm free to pick up my bins of shoes and other carry-ons, and I'm free to go. Entire process takes 2-5 minutes, most often in the lower end of that range.
During the patdown, some agents will ask questions like where I'm flying to and why. This is pretty hit or miss and I don't get the impression that they're part of the security (though it could be). The impression I get is that it's just making small talk on the most obvious available topic.