Granted, every time I've tried to get screened, my poor GF always winds up being 'Random White Female'. And then I laugh at her in front of the rest of the line of people, and make comments degrading the concept of TSA doing anything. Still haven't been screened personally though.
Oh, hey, I'm also Random White Female! I just loved when a disgruntled TSA agent decided to make a spectacle of me -- she took all of my possessions out of my roller-bag, made me wait at the far table while she went back to the x-ray machine and put all of my things through it again but this time my things were scattered outside the bag, and then abandoned my things on the conveyor belt, all while I still hadn't been released to leave the table. To top it off, I got to miss my flight!
Was returning to southern Europe where I was living at the time back in the 90s. I had a duffle bag of car parts b/c I could get them here in the USA cheaper and easier with no linguistic hurdles. This wasn't too many years (2-3) after the Lockerbee, Scotland crash so Heathrow airport was still taking security seriously.
You should have seen the X-ray scanner operator's eyes bug out as my bag went through security. Shock absorbers might look like alot of unfriendly stuff on the scanner.
Missed my flight, etc. The airline got me on another flight, different airline at no extra cost to me. Everyone was very nice.
Back in the very late 80's I had gotten very heavily into racing radio-controlled cars. We were living in Durham, NC and my family was flying out to visit my Grandparents in San Diego for a week or so over Christmas. Since I really wanted to be able to play with my cars while on vacation, my carry-on was a big plastic tool/tackle box. I forget whether I took one or two cars, but took a lot of the tools and parts necessary for maintaining the cars along with me as well as, of course, their radios. The tackle box was rather heavy, not small, and packed full of radio equipment, electric motors, wiring, springs and shocks, shock fluid, oils (this was after all over a decade before 9/11) and tools. Being like 14, I didn't think at all about the potential concerns of taking all of this onto an airplane (as well as not wanting it to come open and spill parts everywhere if it were checked and tossed around) and happily plopped the thing on the X-ray conveyor and went through the metal detector.
The X-ray tech's eyes got so wide when it went through you'd have thought he was a Disney cartoon character. He franticly waved over the security officer nearby and his eyes go about as wide. He saunters over to the exit of the X-ray belt (which the tech stopped with the tackle box in front of him and says, "Whose luggage is this?"
Little 13-year-old me pipes up and says that it's mine- at which point he looks at me in disbelief and accusingly at my parents- who both are trying not to laugh (my Dad was active-duty Military at this point in time, so they're not particularly worried). The security officer asks if he can open the tackle box and inspect its contents, and I shrug and say 'OK.' He proceeds to pull half of everything out of the box and ask me what it is- and of course gets a rather lengthy explanation on all of it from me- until he gets down to the bottom to the actual car(s). He eventually decided that it was indeed mine and that it was just as innocuous as I was (or at least appeared to be) and let me pack it back up and continue on to our flight.
I don't think I got any grief from the San Diego airport security checkpoint though, strangely enough...