A traveller removed his belt, shoes, laptop and dignity at a security checkpoint on Thursday, in that order. Only three of the four were required.

“The fourth is volunteered,” said checkpoint supervisor Nkechi Adeyemi. “Every time. Nobody has ever asked for it.”

Douglas Ferrer, 51, began the process forty feet from the conveyor, unbuckling early in a display the Bureau of Transit Anthropology terms anticipatory compliance.

“He was not asked to remove the belt at that distance,” said Bureau researcher Dr. Pieter Ostrand. “He removed it to demonstrate that he is not the problem. The person ahead is the problem. He would like this understood.”

Ferrer then held the belt for ninety seconds while queueing, because there is nowhere to put a belt, and there never has been.

The ritual concludes in the reassembly zone, a bench of insufficient length where travellers redress at a speed dictated entirely by the person behind them.

“He put both shoes on standing up,” Ostrand said. “He is fifty-one.”

Ferrer reached his gate two hours and forty minutes early, sat down, and began immediately to worry about the return journey.