A Hokie in a Strange Land - also known as Charm City: January 2008

I like this article. Although i only fly 2 -3 times a year at the most, i think i want one of these....

Clearly, Some Are DifferentA New ID Lets You Skip The Line at the Airport. But Just How Fast Are You?

By Hank StueverWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, January 27, 2008; M01

Two of Washington's airports -- Dulles and Reagan National -- will soon be part of the federal government's Registered Traveler program, which offers passengers the happy prospect of getting through security lines faster, swifter, better. (Ninety thousand of them and counting have enrolled.) All you need do is pay an annual fee -- $100 to start, plus a $28 shakedown so the government can make sure you're, you know, okay. Next you submit all sorts of personal information, fingerprints and, because the future is now, an eyeball scan.
Then you are all clear.
In fact, the company that clears you is called Clear, and once you're good to go, they mail you a clear plastic ID card with a square blue logo that says Clear. ("The wait is over," proclaims the company's slogan.)
The mind immediately goes either way on this, first to a dark place: Depressingly, America potentially becomes still less like "America," where everyone was supposedly equal, no matter how bad things got. It's the "Lexus lane" syndrome over and over, where special people buy special access to get ahead of the losers. And yet, hasn't this been the essential human narrative all along? Me before you. People becoming Clear is simply another chapter in the self-deterministic struggle. Ayn Rand would totally have one.
After that comes a more tantalizing thought: Can we get a Clear card for everything else?
Some pre-Clears (if you'll excuse the Scientology undertones) have been waiting for this -- impatiently, of course. Clears are already the fastest people at airports even without the cards: shoes and coat off, laptop out of the case, X-ray buckets lined up on the conveyor belt, waiting for everybody else to get it together.
A few thousand people in the Washington area have already applied, and on a recent weekday, 35 people visited the American Express office downtown at 15th and K streets NW, to get cleared by Clear, says Clear spokeswoman Cindy Rosenthal. "What we hear most from people is that they want predictability," she says. "These are people who don't like waiting on line."
Clears are the simple and speedy people, who tend to know the price of things before they get to the register and always have the cash or debit card ready, and step out of the way immediately to a place where they can put away their change and receipt and reassemble themselves without obstructing the flow. Clears do not dig into their purses in search of engorged wallets into which they go a-huntin' for six cents so as not to break a bill, or to look for that Subway sandwich stamp card. Clears have amazingly uncomplicated business to do at banks and in post office lines -- places they almost never go to anymore -- conducting transactions so fast the teller or clerk barely has time to wish them a good day. Clears tend to order only sodas in movie concession lines. (Clears also get to movies 20 minutes early.) Clears have written pamphlet-length diatribes in their minds about a certain drugstore chain that rhymes with "Skeevy Mess" and the lackadaisical inabilities of not only its incredibly slow employees but its equally slow customers.
So why stop with airports? Clear is already thinking about that. "Major crowd events, like a 60,000-person football game," Rosenthal says, could be conducted more efficiently with Clear cards.
Clears are sometimes confused with "high-maintenance" customers, when, in fact, it is low maintenance that defines the true Clear. (Clears have doubtless eaten their share of the kitchen staff's spit for only suggesting that things could be going faster.)
Clears can give you a very long lecture about the economic concept known as opportunity cost, which is just another way of saying time is money, so why clip coupons?
Beyond a swift exchange of pleasantries, Clears never make chitchat with cashiers, because there are people in line behind the Clear, and the Clear is doing them the favor of clearing out. They almost never cause malfunction of the process, and are never more disappointed in themselves as on the rare occasion when they do take too long. Clears almost never special-order or substitute menu items, and are quietly horrified when their dining companions do. Clears love stores with names like Grab-N'-Go, or Git-N'-Gone, and long for the day when such establishments can honestly and consistently live up to such ideals. Corporate America invented self-checkout lines for Clears, which worked well for about five minutes, until someone who wasn't a Clear caused yet another human paper jam.
There is only one long line Clears accept, and that is the line to vote.
Clears come in all ages, but they get more Clear the closer they get to 40. (And less Clear after 60. You can always tell an old Clear by his polite resignation: Go ahead, all of you, he or she says, as the plane is disembarking. I'm just slowing you down.)
So far, the people who run Clear have only learned the obvious about their customer base: He is a he, a business traveler, and he's generally between 35 and 45 years old, Rosenthal says -- adding that the profile may change as Clear lanes open in other airports. He is affluent and may have a second home. He isn't merely antsy-pantsy. He just flies a lot and is sick of the lines. Clear gets him through airport security in about four minutes. In high-tourist travel markets -- such as Orlando or Denver -- he never knows if the security lines are going to be a matter of a few minutes or an hour, which makes him bonkers with Clear worry. One Clear customer, Rosenthal says, forgot important papers in his car and was able to cross back out into the terminal, retrieve the papers from his secretary, and go back through security in a matter of minutes. This is held up as the definitive Clear success story: zip, zip, zip.
Life, meanwhile, is not as zippy as all that. A Clear finds himself standing in line at a 7-Eleven, with a Big Gulp in one hand and a couple of dollar bills in the other, and realizes that he's going to have to wait for six Un-Clears in front of him to buy lottery tickets and the exact pack of cigarettes that the Un-Clear clerk cannot seem to locate. Shouldn't a Clear's Clear card work in this situation? Shouldn't a Clear be able to go to the front of the line at Starbucks when all the Clear ever orders ( ever!) is a simple grande coffee? If a Clear knows exactly what he wants in the Au Bon Pain or the Taco Bell, can he not flash his Clear card and grab-n-go, git-n-gone?
Not in America. Not yet. The Clear gets his airport privileges (and so far, he gets them only in airports like Albany or Indianapolis -- but also Newark and JFK at certain hours and certain gates), and he gets the nasty looks, too. Clears are sometimes troubled by this. They aren't so self-absorbed as to not feel true remorse and class consciousness. It's not like a country club or a gated neighborhood or first class. Clears encourage clarity in all people.
Here's the rub: The world is ending. Things are getting tight, desperate, short. Clearness is coming to airport security lines just in time for chaos to wipe out everything. Clears are good at things like mass evacuation, but not so great in soup lines. (Just listen to how loudly and repeatedly a Clear sighs when the express lane at Giant is too long.)
In the apocalypse, it's a good idea to stick close to your favorite Clear, but you should also fully expect to be left behind.