‘UGLY!!!’ UG BEHAVIOR
TSA worker’s bizarre ‘ dissdiss- patchpatch’ to flier
It looks like the TSA is hiring the cast of “Mean Girls” now.
A traveler passing through security at an upstate airport got an unexpected sick burn from an employee — when she handed him a note that read, “You ugly!!!”
Neal Strassner, 40, said he was handed the small, brown, folded-up piece of paper by a female worker before collecting his things at the Rochester International Airport checkpoint in June.
He said he initially thought it was a piece of scrap cardboard or some trash.
“I didn’t open it because I didn’t care about it,” he told The Post. “She turned around a few times asking, ‘Are you going to open that?’ ”
When he finally did, he looked at it and saw the message. He said he just put it in his pocket and got on his plane to Kansas.
The guard can be seen doubling over with laughter as Strassner walks away, according to CCTV footage of the incident that Strassner got though a Freedom of Information Act request.
She then tears another piece of cardboard from a box of latex gloves above the bag scanner and begins writing — presumably a message for her next victim.
“I travel constantly, and I’ve never had anything like this happen,” Strassner said.
“I don’t like throwing negativity around,” he said. “What about a note that says, ‘Hey, next time bring me tacos?’ ”
Strassner said he wasn’t going to take any action until he shared the story with friends and they became concerned the guard could pick on a person who may be depressed or in a more vulnerable state.
“If you were bullied, that could be a big deal to somebody,” he said. “A smile could bring someone up from the ground, and that note could drag them back down.”
Security supervisors at the airport initially thought Strassner was joking when he called them a few weeks later to report what happened — until he produced the note and obtained the CCTV footage.
The woman, an employee of Virginia-based security company VMD Corp. that contracts with the TSA, has since been fired, the agency confirmed.
“TSA holds contractors to the highest ethical standards and has zero tolerance for this type of behavior,” it said in a statement.
Strassner said the worker’s employers were equally speechless.
“One of the guys from VMD Corp. called me, and he started apologizing and said, ‘I have no words.’ Once he received the tapes, he couldn’t believe it either.”
VMD Corp. did not respond to a request for comment.
Strassner said he still can’t wrap his head around the nasty trick. “I really have no idea what she was trying to do,” he said.