Trying to Keep the World a Little Bit Safer as a Security Guard
Plus, top 10 security guard stories, so far
I can’t really remember what I used to think about security guards. Something about them being body guards at a rock concert, or patrolling a corporate building at night in a golf cart, or making sure young punks don’t steal anything at a liquor store.
It never looked appealing to me, and these people — mostly men young and old plus a few women, too — didn’t appear to be too happy about their jobs.
Then I became one.
I don’t think that for me and my colleagues that it’s a particularly rewarding career path. But you do get paid, and if you work enough hours, you can get medical coverage and other benefits. The older you get, the better that sounds — especially if your previous career path has gone away.
It’s usually safe, but there can be some stressful things that can come up. If you’re working at night during a swing or graveyard shift, your active imagination might be overly stimulated.
It’s not a good idea to suddenly remember scary movie scenes while on evening patrol. One of these scenes could be from ‘Dawn of the Dead’ where a living human gets stalked and attacked by a zombie in a parking garage. Not a good one to remember while you’re scoping out the vast parking space, floor by floor.
But it is mainly a lot of of tedious hours with work functions that aren’t particularly rewarding. If you do stay at a location for several months, you can get more opportunities there than can make it a little more interesting and satisfying.
You do get a few fascinating moments, as you can see from the photo I took above. Corporate offices, apartment complexes, parks, and other guarded areas, can have their moments of beauty and wonder. It’s good to remember why they should be protected, along with the people living and working there.
It’s in the military shift scheduling model that police, fire fighters, paramedics, ambulance drivers, dispatchers, medical professionals, and command officers, have to live with. So there will be 24/7 shifts and working on holidays. You can trade out on some of it, the longer you’re there.
I have to admit that there have been some fascinating experiences, and a few that have made for good stories. May I share them with you, and a few other points on lessons learned?
My top 10 security guard stories, so far
1. I got one of my first client placements making up for someone who did something stupid. That security guard knocked off a parking gate arm with his car, then got out and attempted to make it look like nothing happened — mainly trying to jam the gate arm together enough to stick. He got caught on videotape, and it got him fired.
2. Thinking that I saw a scary young man who’d previously shown up three times at this corporate headquarters office to complain about not getting an internship. He hadn’t been carrying a gun, but he was certainly scary — and we were told to carefully watch for him. One startling episode came from seeing a young man who looked like him showing up in t-shirt and jeans and carrying a long black bag. It contained his work clothes to change into after going to the gym, which was very good to find out after asking him about it.
3. Dealing with a mentally ill homeless woman who emotionally blew up at a Panda Express in Buena Park. She showed up two retail stores over about an hour later. I stood at the doorway and she got up and left. She did have two young protectors over in the parking lot. One was loud and boisterous, blaming me for violating their rights to freedom. Her boyfriend looked like he was high, and wanted to be somewhere else. All of them followed my suggestions, and left peacefully.
4. I got placed at another corporate location for my next work shift. My supervisor from the previous location with the Panda Express called me to tell me how the next security guard who came on to my shift quit after his first night there. He, too, had some unsettling experiences with homeless people.
5. I put a Notice, a fake parking ticket, on a German luxury sedan’s windshield in a workplace parking lot. It had been there for two nights, so we do put notices on them that they need to move their car. The next day, three men pushed the luxury sedan out of the garage and over to the exterior parking lot of our neighbor, a hotel. The sedan looked good but it couldn’t be driven anymore. A facility manager called the hotel manager about it, and the hotel manager complained that if they called it in to the police, they would be given a hefty towing charge. Fortunately, the three stealth men came back the next day and somehow got rid of the luxury sedan, most likely by having it towed.
6. About eight teenage boys enjoyed coming to a corporate parking lot, and going up to the open top floor to race around on their e-bikes. They’d been asked to leave before. But one day, they came back, shot up to the top floor and road around like racers. My security co-worker and I saw them and took off to make sure they left safely. He road the golf cart and I took the elevator to the roof of the parking structure. We got them out of there, but one of the owners of the business building and parking structure complained about us taking two minutes to get them out of there. We promised to be quicker next time.
7. Two of the e-biker teenage dudes showed up again that weekend on a Sunday afternoon. They loved being there, for sure. They set off a smoky fireworks bomb in the parking garage, then raced away on their e-bikes. It all got caught on a security camera, so we had to watch it and agree to call the police department if they came back. Who knows what they might set off next time?
8. Seeing a homeless man in a parking basement charging his phone and organizing his life. It was creepy, so I asked a co-worker to join me in looking for him. Fortunately, he was gone. About a month before, at a previous work location, another homeless man slept in his sleeping bag in a very precarious place — curbside in a street where he could easily be run over by a car. I got him to move.
9. Being sent to a corporate client in SoCal that has a few acres covered with business buildings, parking garages, and an apartment building with underground parking. The trick on my first day at that location was finding fellow security guards who could help me get set up and started on the shift. A couple of phone calls and overcoming bad directions later, we found each other. Phew!
10. Probably the strangest one of all was doing a night watch right before midnight. I had to place all the cars that I saw on a list, with all the pertinent information included. One night, I saw a very strange scene — a Toyota Avalon with its right-rear section completely bashed in from a car crash. It was parked in a disabled parking spot without a hanging placard or a disabled parking license plate. I put a fake warning ticket on the windshield and headed back to the office. As I started to tell my co-worker the story, his face grew gaunt. “That’s my car,” said. Actually it was his parents’ car, but he agreed to park a few spaces over to the right during the next work shift.
Reflections on being a security guard
Having done this work for six months, I have a few thoughts on what it’s about and what it’s like:
1. Some people appreciate security guards. This became clear while working one day at an aerospace company’s regional office. The parent company was ending the contract with the security company at the end of that week. They were cutting costs and were also letting go other partner companies. Employees leaving the building got quite angry when they found out the security company was leaving; as did delivery companies like FedEx and UPS, who were used to getting help from security on dealing with tricky delivery drop offs. I’ve also been at other locations where I’ve seen several people’s faces light up when they saw me coming along. They might even complement me and my co-workers as we rode on an elevator together. Boy, are they glad to see us!
2. We sometimes look like police officers, but we’re not. We can get licenses and permission to carry guns and other weapons like pepper spray, but even after passing a safety class, we can only use them as private citizens and not with the legal authority of law enforcement officers.
3. One bad situation I had was being sent to a corporate headquarters welcome area. We would get in trouble for looking at our personal phones. All we could do was sit there and look official. I was grateful to get a text message from our regional office that I was being sent to another location, as it was nearly driving me crazy.
4. The pay isn’t great, but they do pay us every week. And they’re fair about helping us trade shifts with co-workers and take off some days when we need to.
5. There is some level of public service and taking the job seriously that can happen for many of us. Once in a while, you can really help someone out of a bad situation. I’ve found a couple of lost items and turned them in, and boy were these people grateful to hear about it. Feeling safer getting into the cars, or back into their apartments, is gratefully mentioned by a few of them.
6. One evening, I got a call complaining about children chalking up a public spot in an apartment building. I was sort of conflicted by it — part of me wanted to be a law enforcement officer making kids and parents accountable for their actions. After seeing the vivid display of chalk art, my mind opened up. What if that’s an artistic genius who needed to do it — and will someday create some of the greatest visual art ever? If nothing else, one or more kids got to have a lot of fun. I think we can all live with that.
In my book that will be coming out soon, I delve into what jobs like being a security guard have meant for me. It’s not the only job I’ve been surprised that I would end up doing.
“Decades ago, I had thought that at this point in my life, I should be a lead editor at a good magazine looking at retirement in a few years and world travel; or I should have written five great books and won an award or two. So far, they’re yet to happen.”
My book, Discovery: How my life finally made sense to me — The joy of telling a story that took so long to tell, explores how long it’s taken me to write that book and what’s behind it all. Work has been a big part of it — getting in the way of my writing, and sometimes supporting it in different ways.
Let’s say, I didn’t expect to be working as a security guard. But good stories usually come up — great to share with fellow security guards and my significant other when I get home.
