Another reason to like Portland

I flew out of PDX (Portland Airport) tonight, and even though I accidentally ended up spending more time with TSA agents than intended, it was still a positive experience. I hit "bad luck" twice in the security line.

First, I set off the metal detector. (And I was not wearing anything that I hadn't worn "successfully" through airport metal detectors before.)

Second, my bag accidentally contained a banned item tucked way down under an extension cord and some crushed granola bars. Off to secondary screening I went. After a quick back-rub and pat-down, the agent started going through my bag. After the first pass, the agent couldn't find anything so he put it through the x-ray again, and started digging through one of the exterior pockets. After finding the object, he asked if I wanted to ship it home for about $10. I did, so we walked over to an ATM-like machine from ReturnKey Systems with a simple touch screen interface. He put the object in a pouch, fed it into the machine, and left me to punch my information in and swipe my credit card.

The thing that impressed me the most, is that throughout this whole thing, the agents were friendly. They weren't acting as if they hated their job. They spoke English well. And they did their job: they found an object that shouldn't have been there. Something another airport missed. Oops. (On the other hand, they didn't make me pull my one-liter bag containing 3.4oz or less bottles of liquids out of the bag. I didn't mind.)

Why can't airport security be this nice at the airports I regularly traverse?