Although I'm not convinced of the effectiveness of the security checkpoints at MAN, I can only speak from my own experience. I have only ever found the security staff to be friendly and not intrusive. When I went through a phase of beeping the scanner, one of the security officers overheard me talking to my colleague as to what was setting it off and, after doing the search, kindly took the time to show it was my shoes by using the handheld scanner. However, I have rarely beeped the scanner since and I still have the same shoes ..... ???? It's sad to hear others have had problems but no complaints about the staff from me.
Only thing that does annoy me is the large queue of passengers in the staff channel on busy days. Kind of defeats the idea of having a staff channel really!