Reply #106: I'm not talking about not standing up for your rights

[Ms. Toad]

I am talking about people who know the rules and deliberately try to get away with breaking them. The OP didn't say the bottle was within the limits (and from the wording it appeared to me that the OP knew it was over the limit and is annoyed at getting caught).

If you want to challenge the carry-on rules - great. You have my full support - but the screening gate is not the proper place to challenge them. The peons there have no authority to change the rules, and forcing everyone behind you to wait while your bags to through screening 2-3 times is just plain rude to everyone behind you. And when you're rude about breaking the rules, chances are it is going to be hard for the TSA to just take it and not have some of it reflect back out. That was pretty hard for me to do when I had a job of enforcing (different) rules, and I only encountered rude SOBs who pretended the rules didn't apply to them once or twice a week a week rather than several times a day. It's just human nature that when you're having a bad day others you encounter are going to share in some of it.