Life is Funny

A long time ago, I spent quite a few years in my youth as a Security Officer (aka Security Guard).

There are a few people employed in that profession that take their security job seriously and do very well at it. However, more often than not, there is a lot of politicial mind games played between co-workers. When “nothing” is happening — no emergencies to take care of, the life of a security guard can be pretty boring.

I remember one time I got on the bad side of management, and my entire 8 hour shift was spent standing infront of a broken door. As the public would walk up to the door, I’d have to say, sorry, the door is broken.

I wasn’t allowed a stool, or a chair, and I had to stand for 8 hours straight with only a 30 minute break. I asked them why we couldn’t just put a sign on the door, with a chair or pilon infront, and they said “just incase someone can’t read”..

I remember another time on midnight shift, there was a guard, we’ll call him Henry. He would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. This isn’t something you’d expect from a security officer.

On his patrol of this large industrial place at night, he’d unscrew the odd lightbulb from the many washrooms and put them in a bag. He’d dig up freshly planted flowers and plants from the gardens and put them in his trunk.

He’d take pens and pencils off of people’s desks. He’d steal sandwiches from refrigerators. He’d take entire cases of beer from the storage rooms. He’d take coffee grinds, sugar, and cups home.

He’d take, take, take… and he’d do it every night. The problem is, no one wanted to report him, everyone just turned a blind eye figgering that he would get caught on his own. Well this happened over the course of a year, and I never did see him get caught.

I remember getting trained once at a new location. They told me to be there at 6pm to meet another security guard and he’d give me a walk through of the place after it closed. After an hour of training, it was my job to work the next 8 hours alone.

As we walked through the place, he’d say things like:

“Ok, first of all, when you are on patrol, you are suppose to walk through the underground parking lots.. But there is no sheet to sign down there, so they won’t know if you did it or not. I never do”

Then he says, before we go, I always bring 2 or 3 different pens, different blue inks from different pens write differently. When we have to sign the books in different locations, I’ll walk through the place once, and sign my name 8 times with different pens, so it looks like I was actually here at different times.

He then told me where the best place to sleep was… “This couch over here is the most comfortable”

He’d tell me which walk in refrigerator in the commercial kitchen wasn’t locked, where I could grab a bite to eat if I wanted to… He explained where there was a TV, and how to work an entire 8 hour shift while doing practically nothing.

On another job site, we were issued wooden stick batons. It was an empty factory with empty offices. These young security guards always liked playing with their batons, twirling them in the air, catching them, etc.

Rumor had it that the reason we were watching the place is that the client that had previously leased it, and moved away, and it sat dormant too long, so they were planning on tearing the entire building down soon, and we were there to stop the homeless from coming into the building before destruction day.

So the security guards would take their batons and smash holes in the drywall and a couple of the glass windows separating the offices. In a couple days, the walls looked like swiss cheese.

One of the supervisors came to do a random check on one of the employees one day (usually once every 3 or 4 days a supervisor would randomly show up)..

It turned out that the building was NOT going to be demolished. It was simply vacant for a period while a new tenant who’s lease was expiring at his old location, was moving to this location that we were guarding. The story got mixed up, and all this wreckless damage that happened by the security guards had to be paid for by the security company which cost a minimum of $5,000 to repair!

I saw a lot in my day as a security guard, and this is only some of it!