Upvote:10
It depends a lot on the airport and the individual screener. The TSA itself is fairly inconsistent in applying their own rules and very ineffective at detecting actual weapons etc.
I've certainly had engagements with security employees that obviously didn't know their own rules or just made them up on the fly. Just two weeks ago I get yelled at because I didn't put my stick deodorant into the zip lock bag. That's explicitly allowed by the TSA, but you can't really argue the point with the screener: they can easily make you miss your flight if they feel like it. There is no way you can win this argument even if you are right.
In your case, you can just keep doing what you are doing. At some point a screener will probably complain about it, so make sure you have a zip lock handy that you can transfer the items to. The actual rules don't matter here, since you have no way of "enforcing" them. If you want to make your flight, you just do what the screener tells you, regardless of what the law says.