Cha Cha Cha Change, TSA Style!

Please bare with me as I tell a story about my trip home from LessConf!

It was 1:30 PM on the Monday after LessConf and I had just checked my baggage with Southwest and was heading to security at the Jacksonville airport. As I was about 100 feet from the entrance to security, I noticed there was a Nathan’s hot dog place to my left and I hadn’t eaten anything yet.

Realizing I had plenty of time before my flight, and wanting food I would later regret, I headed over there and purchased a hot dog and cheesy hash browns (OMG they were so good!). I finished chowing down in about 1 minute 46 seconds, picked up my trash and headed to the trash can. I threw out my trash and reached in my pocket to fetch my receipt to throw away as well.

It was at this instant I realized I had about 3 dollars in change in my pocket and was about to go through security. The thought passed through my head that I would rather throw the change in the trash than deal with it in security. WTF? Did I really just think about throwing away a perfectly good $3 because I didn’t want to deal with change in my shoes as I fumbled through security?! I DID. Change is your mortal enemy when going through security!

Then I got really excited because I realized many other travelers probably face the same dilemma! What if we took advantage of this and gave them the option, when removing change from their pockets, to either put it in their shoe in one of those plastic buckets or one of those buckets collecting change for charity?

I really think this is a great way to raise massive amounts of money for charity. Does anybody know where I would start to get something like this implemented?