The Tale of the $6.00 per Hour Security Guard

Once, I worked as a guard for a company that had a Government contract. It was really easy, but the pay was lousy. I made $6.00 per hour. Every day, I’d get the paper when I got off and look for another job. The guys I worked with thought I was crazy.
Late night, we’d stand around and talk. They were basically happy making peasant wages. Not me, every night, I’d tell them I was getting out of here the first chance I got.
Guys would ask me, “Where you going to go and make more money than this working security?”
I’d tell them I was worth more than six bucks; I was going to find a job for at least twice that. They’d all laugh and say, “There are no $12.00 jobs in security,” and that I should stop dreaming and get back to work.
Then one morning, just about the same time I got into bed after the night shift, the company I worked for called. The personnel lady informed me that my security clearance papers hadn’t been filled out properly and they wanted me to come in right then and correct them so they could conduct the background check.
Now, I’m not a fool; I knew that this clearance was going to cost them at least ten thousand dollars and they wanted to pay me six fucking dollars. I told the lady that there wasn’t a whole lot I’d do for six dollars, and getting out of bed to drive thirty minutes to fill out a form was one of the things I would not do. I hung up the phone.
When I got back to work that night, the supervisor came to me and inquired about the forms. I told him the same thing I’d told the lady on the phone. Then the asshole asked me why I had to be so belligerent. At that moment, I gave my two weeks’ notice.
Later, we were outside having our normal talk, and all the other officers again told me there were no twelve dollar jobs, and that the company we worked for was a good company, and that I should go fill out the form and stay.
I did my two weeks and told them all to take care; I was going to find me a good paying security job.
The next day, I landed a job for $13.00! I worked for a couple of months and, one day, I was on my way home from work when I decided to stop in and check on my old friends. I pulled up and they all came out and asked how things were going.
I explained how I had landed a new job and what it paid. They all got excited and I told them that there were no more thirteen dollar jobs, I got the last one. Before I left, I also informed them I was waiting on my weapons permit and that I was in line for another job that paid eighteen dollars an hour. They almost went into shock. I laughed all the way home.
Several months later, after I had started working my new job, I dropped by to check on them again. This time, I was driving a shiny new 300ZX. I pulled up and they didn’t have a clue who the fuck I was. They all stood there looking to see who was in the car.
I got out and they almost fainted. I told them about my latest job and its eighteen dollar pay, and they almost shit. They wanted to know how they could get a position at the new place. “Sorry,” I told them, “they have no more eighteen dollar positions. I got the last one.”
But, before I left, I couldn’t help but explain to them about the new position I had accepted. I’d taken a position overseas that paid a whopping seventy thousand dollars! They couldn’t believe it.
The moral to this story is, if you feel like six bucks is all you’re worth, then six dollars is all you’ll ever get.

Why I arrested my best friends girlfriend

One of our LP managers had a problem with an employee who was ripping off merchandise on Saturdays, which happened to be the manager’s day off. When I found out about it, I asked her why she didn’t call me so I could come in and take care of it. Well, the girl in question was the girlfriend of my best friend, and he himself was a LP manager at one of our other stores. I explained that I didn’t have a problem with it and she’d be treated like any other suspect. The case became mine.
The first Saturday, I came in and positioned myself in a tower behind a display so that I’d have a clear view of her department all day. Well, that didn’t work because all hell broke lose during the shift. The first major call I got was a customer attempting to walk out the store with some comforters that he hadn’t paid for. I caught his ass on the escalator, tall ass brother with two expensive comforters and no store bags. I jumped on the escalator behind him and gently whispered something to the effect that, if, he attempted to leave the store without paying for the merchandise, he’d have to deal with me. He never said a word, never turned around. When the escalator got to the bottom, he dropped the merchandise on the floor and headed straight out the door. First crisis over!
I got back into position. As soon as I was settled, I got a call that a customer had a gun. Damn! I left my perch and went to check on the situation. I got to the department just as the guy was exiting the store. The department manager walked with me, telling me what the guy had said and done in the department. Not his lucky day. I walked outside and the first cop that came by, I relayed the info to him. They picked his dumb ass up for aggravated assault. By the time everyone had finished with their statements, the day was over. The girl I came to watch, she smiled and waved on her way out the door. I swear, I couldn’t remember, but, I thought those sunglasses she had on belonged to us. Oh well, one thing about a successful thief, they are like satisfied customers. They always come back.
The next Saturday, I met her when she entered the store. I walked her to her department so I could make a mental note of everything she had on and in her possession. I instructed store management that I was working on an internal case; I was not to be disturbed unless it was absolutely necessary. The first couple of hours in my perch were boring. The fun started when the girl working with her in the department went on a break. She made her way over to the costume jewelry counter and removed a pair of earrings. She did the whole bit and placed them beside her ear while looking into a mirror. No doubt, she was looking for me. She then removed the earrings from the backing and put them on. I had to admit they looked pretty good on her. She then put the backing in the drawer under her register.
Later, she walked into the women’s clothing department, next to where she worked, and selected a pink jacket. She took it back to her department and put it on. When she tried on that jacket, everything clicked. I knew then what was different when she left the store the week before. It was a tan scarf. I didn’t notice it when she left because I was so busy, but I could see it vividly in my mind. Also, it didn’t hurt that the same scarf was hanging in the department next to where she got the jacket.
So what she’d do was, the day before, select the items she wanted to steal. She’d wear something that would match the item she was going to take and no one would notice because it didn’t come from her department anyway. She put that pink jacket on, and I swear, it matched her outfit perfectly. My heart started beating fast, especially when she started looking for scissors to cut off the tag. When she couldn’t find a pair in her department, she simply tucked the tag inside the sleeve.
Everything was cool until the girl working with her came back from break. She said something about the jacket, probably about how pretty it was on her, and my suspect began twirling around in front of the mirror like she was a customer. I knew, at that point, she couldn’t take the jacket because the other girl had commented on it. Damn. But I still had the earrings to hope for.
It’s funny, if you ever go into a loss prevention office, watch the officers work, we go into this cheerleader mode and we become the little voice in the suspect’s head whispering, “Come on, take it, please, nobody will know, nobody.” All the time, we’re rooting for people to fuck up so we can catch them.
Finally, my suspect went on her lunch break which meant she was probably going to be exiting the building. When she went to clock out, I went into her department and retrieved the backing from the earrings.
When she was leaving the building, I managed to run into her but I made no mention of her new earrings. Actually, I could have arrested her as soon as she left the facility with the merchandise. But, management was a little soft and they might believe her story that she’d tried them on and forgot to remove them before she went to lunch. However, when she returned and I faked going to lunch, the earrings mysteriously disappeared.
Now, all I had to do was watch her for the rest of the shift to insure she didn’t try to put the item back without my knowledge. This would be rather difficult since I now had the backing in my pocket.
After a while, I started rooting for her to put the items back, but with less than twenty minutes to go before closing, I didn’t think she would. Damn. Even though I’ve arrested employees before, this one was going to be hard. This was my best friend’s girlfriend; she’d even been to my house, met my girlfriend. Damn. I do have a bit of a conscience.
Shit! I picked up the phone, called my friend, told him the situation, and informed him that I could go downstairs and tell her to give the earrings back and there would be no harm and no foul, or the other option was, I could treat her like all the rest of our suspects and bust her. It became his decision. He didn’t even think about it, he said, “Do your job, bust her dumb ass!”
She exited the store, said goodbye to me and the store manager (who didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on). I followed her outside and arrested her. She cried like a baby. Then, she begged me not to tell her boyfriend and pleaded with me to pick her up from the police station so she didn’t have to call him or her family to get her. I felt bad but I had to explain to her that I couldn’t pick her up because it’d be a conflict of interest. So I told her to call my girlfriend and she’d pick her up from the station.
That was one of the toughest things I had to do in my early years in LP. As for my friend, it didn’t bother him at all. He broke up with her that same day; he told me it was disrespectful for her to be stealing when she knew what he did for a living.

Security Officer gets fired on his day off

Just like any other job, working security is no different. We've all worked along side some strange and interesting people, however in security at times I think we get the abundance of them.

Everyone of us has at one time or another worked with someone whom has done something just so utterly stupid that you didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for the poor soul.

So for today I think I'll give you the story of a former co-worker and his ridiculous thought process and you determine which way you feel about his asinine action.

I was working as a Security Police Officer on a USAF installation, and although we were civilians and at the time not considered Sworn Officers (that would come later with a switch to DOD) we were given a whole lot of leeway by the local Police Departments. Hell, we wore uniforms that pretty much mirrored every other PD in the city and with the exception of the Base shoulder patch it was really hard to tell the difference. Even our badges were the same as our local counterparts. Looking back on it I think they gave us the latitude because of our affiliation with the Government, and Uncle Sam carries a big stick! Oh, the pay was pretty much on the same level with every other PD in the area, which didn't hurt.

As for the job, it was a cake walk. Hell, conducting a traffic stop on a military base can be dangerous but not nearly as bad as what the local Pd's dealt with. Yeah we had domestics and drunken drivers and such, but all in all it was a great place to work.

Getting back to the story line here, I was walking down the hallway past the admin offices on my way back to my patrol car and I overheard the the Chief on his phone and he wasn't happy. The part I caught was, "Hell no, we're not conducting a sting operation in that area or any area for that matter." He then ended the conversation with, "Arrest his ass, and confiscate his badge!"

I hurried out the door and jumped into my patrol car because when he finished that call I didn't want to be anywhere in the vicinity. Someone had really screwed up this time and the last thing I wanted was to get chewed out for someone elses stupidity.

I didn't think much more about it and the next day when I returned to work for briefing you probably could guess what the topic was? That's right, and the message was loud and clear. It is no longer permissible to carry your badge off duty!

Well this just sucked, that badge had gotten many of us into night clubs, strip joints and other places without having to pay a cover as well as gotten me for one out of at least two speeding tickets over the years. We had never really thought anything wrong with it. The key was to show it but do it with subtlety. You carry a badge holder that was also a wallet and therefore whenever you had to show ID, you removed the wallet and at the first sight of the badge it was, "Oh, don't worry about paying, come on in." Thank you very much!

After briefing I went up to one of the supervisors and inquired as to what exactly had led to this change in policy.

After laughing for a long while, and I mean a long while this is what he explained to me. One of the officers on his day off had taken his wife to the hair dresser. Knowing that she would be there for several hours he decided to drive around looking for something to occupy his time.

Now most of us in the department probably would have found the closest firing range and went in and sent a few down range (we all had concealed permits and most of us carried all the time).

Well not this guy, he wanted to send a few down range but not at the local range. He drives around and sees this woman standing on the corner and like an idiot he pulls over and she walks up to the car. She asks if he'd like a date and he agrees and she gets in the car. She points him to a alley where they can have some privacy and he does just that. However, as soon as he parks the car she reaches for what he thinks is condoms and instead she pulls out a badge! Now the car is surrounded by several other cops and she says, "Your under arrest for soliciting prostitution," without thinking (here I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, because up until this time he really hasn't been thinking at all) he says to her, "No you're under arrest we're running a sting in this area to stop prostitution", and he pulls out his badge to prove it.

This was all about the time I was heading to my patrol car and the Chief was on the phone, because of course the PD had to check it all out to see if they could cut the guy some slack as well as show some professional courtesy. Unfortunately for the officer, or former officer the Chief wasn't trying to hear it.

Every time I think about this story I think to myself, "How in the hell do you get fired on your day off?"

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A really Funny Security story

When you first start working for a guard company, they usually send you to different locations until they find one that fits you or one that they have trouble filling. Unfortunately, most time of the time, it’s the latter of the two.
During this moving period, you meet some cool people. I met a fat guy who worked with me at a gated community one night. He told me all about the company and the good places to ask to work on a permanent basis.
They had given me a schedule for the week. Each day was at a different location, so, I showed it to him and he looked it over. When he got to my fourth day, he told me he didn’t like that post because it was at a cemetery.
He told me the reason they had guards there overnight was, people would steal the flowers from the graves and then resell them. That’s pretty sad but there are some screwed up people in this world.
He also told me, on the property at the top of the hill, was a crematory, that the son of the guy who owned it was pretty much a wacko. He said the son had been seen driving by the guard shack with dead bodies sitting in the front seat, and that was why they had a hard time keeping permanent guards there.
By the time he finished his story, I was thinking I’d probably call in sick that day and leave it to someone else to work. Luckily for me, he told me that, at night, they always had two guards working, instead of one, like the day shift. Whew! That was a relief.
The day came for me to work at the cemetery and something told me to call in, but it was a new job and my girlfriend was on my case about being responsible. She also liked teasing me a little about being scared of ghosts and goblins. So, to prove her wrong, I went to work.
I pulled up to the post. It was well-lit so that made me a little more comfortable. Also, I thought I’d have someone to work with to make the time go by fast. I went into the guard shack and the first thing the guard on duty said was, the other guard had called in sick, so, I was going to be working there alone!
I couldn’t let this guy know that I wasn’t too happy about being at this cemetery all by myself all night. I couldn’t allow him to question my manhood. He gave me a quick post briefing and showed me everything I needed to know. Before he left, I started to feel a little better about the situation. Then, he informed me that the only person left on the premises was the son of the crematory owner and he’d probably leave in an hour or so. Damn, I’d gotten so comfortable I’d forgotten about him, now I’d have to worry about this wacko until he left.
Once the guard I relieved was gone, I turned on the radio and used the phone to call my girl. There was really nothing to do except to make sure no one entered the grounds until morning when the property opened for business. Since the post had been started a year earlier, flower thieves had to go elsewhere for merchandise.
About an hour into my shift, I heard a car start behind me. I stepped out and saw the headlights of the only car left turn on. The son was headed down the hill towards the gate and me. It’s amazing how much crazy stuff can go through your mind in a matter of seconds when you get a little scared.
The car came closer to the gate and I positioned myself in front of the guard house in the center of the median so I didn’t look nervous, and, also, I wasn’t too close to the lane where his car was. As soon as he neared the gate, he slowed down, and when he did, I thought he might say goodnight or something. When the car moved alongside the guard house, I looked inside and, I swear, all I saw was a female arm. He was pointing it at me.
I screamed like a little girl and hauled ass. I was running down the street and this guy was following me. I couldn’t get away fast enough; it was like a bad dream. There were no other cars coming. On one side, I had the cemetery and I damn sure was not going to climb the fence and run through there. So I went full speed down the side of the road.
I ran about a half mile until I was exhausted but this guy was still following me. Finally, I grabbed a big rock because I’d had enough. When he saw that rock, he stopped the car and opened the door. I bolted again. In the distance, I heard someone calling my name. When I finally got enough nerve to look back, I saw the son and thought he looked kind of familiar. He kept calling my name, and when I finally recognized his voice, I knew I’d been had.
There was no son, and the arm was a mannequin arm. The culprit was my fat co-worker from a few days before. I should have hit him with that rock. Come to find out, his uncle ran the crematory, and, three days a week, he worked for his uncle as a janitor cleaning up the place.
He was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath, and I was so pissed I was wishing he’d have a heart attack. He had tears rolling down his cheeks and, after a while, I laughed too. On the way back, I was trying to figure out how I could keep his fat ass from ever telling anyone this story.
When we got back to the gate, the guard I relieved was standing at the gate and before we got out of the car, he, too, burst out laughing. I found out later that all new hires went through this ritual. In the end, it wasn’t so bad; hell, later, I helped set people up for their night at the cemetery.