Two of my most favorite Holidays are happening this week.

This is a holiday that I made up. I’ve been secretly celebrating it myself for years now, but now, I spread the word to the people.

Be nice to security guards today.

You don’t have to tell them it’s a holiday, just smile when you walk past them instead of grunting or pretending they’re not there. If they’re enforcing a policy that you think is stupid, don’t shoot the messenger. If there’s a security guard at work that you see every day, stop and ask their name. Buy ‘em a cup of coffee. Or a donut.

I worked as a Security Guard for several years while I was in college, and we basically have 2 job responsibilities.

(1) To stand there and lower the insurance premium, while doing as little as humanly possible to avoid getting the company sued.
Seriously, that’s the only reason most places hire security. But to actually stop anyone from doing anything….. every time a security guard so much as says ‘hang on a second’ to a potential thief or law-breaker, he opens up the company to a false arrest lawsuit. So security guards are trained to stay out of the way, and call the police if there’s trouble. And any time a security guard tries to strike up a friendly conversation, people assume they’re trying to ’start something’ and get defensive. This means that many stand in one spot, or walk in one big circle all day, passing thousands of people, with little to no human interaction.
They deserve a smile, or a hello, or a high five.

(2) To enforce policies.
This is the place where interaction does take place, but mostly involves the use of the word ’stupid’ repeated again and again.
Believe me, every policy that you think is stupid, they think is stupid too. Everything you think they should ‘let slide’, they probably already have, and got torn a new one by someone upstairs with more gold-colored plastic affixed to their uniform. You’re not telling them anything new, you’re just making them feel like jerks for something they have no control over.
I know I’ve been guilty of that several dozen times a day. So at least for today, be cool to the guard, and write a letter to the people who actually make the stupid policies.

10-4, in security radio code, is acknowledgement. So acknowledge your security guards today.

My other favorite holiday is this Saturday……

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 at 11:44 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.