The Marimba tone blared out from my phone speaker at 4:00 AM. Although I had been in Boston for the three days prior, my body still had not adjusted to the time difference. It's too early to be waking up.
But today was the day that we were going to do terminal observations. To pull out our clipboards and watch strangers sort themselves into the general, Pre-Check, and CLEAR checkpoint queues. To see how long groups of travelers took to use a kiosk, to drop their bags off, or to speak with an agent. And to get the best representative data, we needed to observe the period when the system was under the most strain; its peak-period performance. So we had to watch the terminal in the 5 AM hour as yawning red-eyed passengers scrambled to board their early-morning departures.
Flipping on a light, I got out of bed, my head recoiling and my eyes squinting from the light. I showered, brushed my teeth, styled my hair, and donned my "client visit" attire--a suit and tie. Because I was in Boston in December, I also wrapped a pashmina around my neck for warmth.
Two colleagues and I met in the lobby of our Copley Square hotel. We summoned an Uber to take us to Terminal B. At this inhumanely hour, the streets were nearly deserted.
Upon arrival, I placed myself in the Terminal B East lobby, standing against the back wall of the circulation corridor running parallel to Spirit's, Alaska's, and Southwest's check-in counters. From my vantage point, I could see all three sets of counters. I drew three tables on a blank sheet of paper I procured from my binder: one for Spirit, one for Alaska, and one for Southwest. I began making tally marks for each passenger that used a particular check-in channel: Did this passenger use a kiosk and then leave? Did this passenger go straight to the full-service counter? Did this passenger use a kiosk and then go to bag drop? My brain struggled to keep track of all the simultaneous transactions occurring across three check-in areas as I made additional marks. This is a fraught exercise, I thought. I'm not getting this perfectly, and this is too small of a sample size anyway.
The female Alaska agent kept looking at me as I marked up my page. Yeah, this probably looks weird. A few minutes later, with a lull in customers, she approached me.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm on a project working with the airport. I'm collecting data on what check-in modes passengers use."
"Do you have a badge?"
"No."
"Who are you working with?"
"The Capital Programs group for Massport. [Name] is our contact."
I held up the binder I was using, the cover of which had a printed photo of the Massport staff member who served as our project manager above his phone number. She examined the binder.
"Normally, they tell us if they're going to have staff out here like this."
"I can try giving him a call, but he's probably sleeping."
As I dialed my Massport contact's number, the agent walked back toward her desk. I saw her also make a call. As expected, my call went to voicemail. She remained behind her desk, so I continued to observe passengers and collect data. Moments later, a Massachusetts State Trooper wearing his full leather-daddy boots, uniform, and hat approached the Alaska counter and began speaking with the agent. They both walked over toward me. I repeated to the officer what I was doing, why I was doing it, and whom I was working with at Massport.
"Ops has no information that anyone was going to be out here doing this," the officer told me. So [name] forgot to alert operations.
The officer also attempted to call my contact. He left him a voicemail, identifying himself as an officer.
Not wanting to cause trouble, I stopped making tally marks on my sheet. I called my supervisor, who was a badgeholder and was stationed in Terminal B West. As I explained to him what was happening, four other State Troopers joined our exchange.
We remained in deadlock for about another five minutes, when my supervisor came over, showed his badge, and explained our purpose for watching strangers. The State Troopers were not ready to let us go until they received confirmation from Massport staff that we were authorized. Chatter about us fluttered in and out on the officers' radios. No one was tense; no one was angry; everyone was calm.
Shortly after 6:00 AM, our Massport contact had awakened, seen the bombardment of messages on his phone, and called operations to sort things out. As the information gradually trickled into the officers' radios, they slowly started peeling off and returning to their normal posts. We held a final exchange, and then the State Troopers were gone. My colleagues also returned to their positions. But by now, the early-morning departure peak was over. I had missed dozens of passengers sorting themselves into the various check-in channels. The queues were empty.
I stood there for another five minutes, making very few additional tally marks, until I decided to join my colleagues in Terminal B West--American's counters were allegedly still busy and could provide a data source. To show her I harbored no ill will, I decided to approach the Alaska agent who first confronted me, who remained behind her desk.
"Thank you for calling the State Troopers; that was the right thing to do. I know what I was doing definitely looked suspicious."
As I crossed the parking lot to get to the other side of the Terminal B landside, I remembered that BOS was the originating airport for the two planes that crashed into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Perhaps understandably, airport security was consequently a very serious matter at BOS. Perhaps the Massachusetts State Police force felt guilty for allowing terrorists to pass under their noses and kill thousands. Perhaps BOS's failure to guarantee the safety of the National Airspace System created a culture of fear among airport employees.
Is that the kind of society we want to cultivate--one of mistrust? How can we effectively coexist if we are constantly surveilling each other and we don't believe what they tell us? Have we overdone it with the safety and security rhetoric?
While I personally may not favor the culture of suspicion, it surely helps many people feel safe, secure and comfortable--travelers and airport employees alike. And it is not my place to take that away. If engaging in the practice of, "if you see something, say something" helps someone feel safe, then I'm happy to let it stand. I was not harmed in my encounter with the State Troopers.
But, I wondered, what if I were black? What if I were not as immaculately dressed as I am right now? What if I were wearing a dastār? My encounter with the State Troopers could have ended very differently. I could have been met with a much harsher attitude, could have been arrested with probable cause, could have been physically assaulted. But I was not. Was it due to my presentation? I will never know.
I wondered how sustainable this method of data collection is for my line of work. How the ability to collect these data might hinge on an unspoken privilege of presenting a certain way such that one's actions are less readily called into question. I concluded in that moment that I could never ask a non-white colleague to collect data in this manner.
Around 7:30 AM, my four colleagues and I wrapped up our observations, gathered our belongings, and headed to the Massport offices between Terminals B and C.
