There is so much I want to say about the place I’ve been guarding of late. I really don’t know where to begin. To call it a hell hole is being nice, and to say the management is bad is an understatement. Fortunately for me, I’m not going to be there permanently, but I’m not sure I can even survive the few weeks I will be there till I begin my role on night patrols.

The place is extremely understaffed and over managed. The General Manager puts his fingers in everyone’s business. I’m sure he sees it as being a hands on manager, but its breeding a very major situation among the staff thats not healthy. No one likes to be micro managed, and what he’s doing is leaving his management teams, and the staff in general, feeling like they’re not trusted to do the jobs they’re hired to do. He treats everyone poorly and if it doesn’t go his way, he gets a right royal tantrum going. You cannot make suggestions or point out flaws because he just ignores them completely.

There are staff there with many years experience who were demoted when the new store opened. Many of the staff that moved from the old store have already left, and a lot of those that are still there are either actively looking for alternate work, or intend to very shortly. The store relies heavily on students and with high schools and universities just started, the store has lost many day time staff during the week. By most estimates from those in the management teams, they’re about 20-30 people short across the whole store. Thats significant.

In the week I’ve spent there, I’ve gotten friendly with many of the staff. A lot of them will gladly talk to me about their issues with the company because I’m a safe outsider. Unfortunately no one seems to bring their issues up at the morning meetings. The same morning meetings that are held just inside the main entrance where anyone off the street can listen in to them going over the previous days take or discussing upcoming promotions and what needs to be done for them.

From a security point of view, the store is a nightmare. Made worse by the fact that the general manager doesn’t seem to care. He’s so far ignored every suggestion from his security manager, other than having guards on site. There are a LOT of cameras dotted through out the store, but several key places have very poor or no camera coverage at all. Even more bizarre, the manager has declared that there must be at least one guard at the main entry door at all times to greet the customers and direct them if they want to know where something is. In effect, instead of hiring his own staff to be greeters, he’s decided that hiring a security guard is a better choice.

Oh, did I mention that no one is allowed to talk socially amongst themselves during quiet times unless they’re on a break? All chat has to be work related.

He wants the security guards to be part of the team, yet he’s … Lets just say he’s making it exceptionally difficult for even his own staff to be a team, let alone myself and the guys I’m responsible for to feel like we belong there.

Ironically, the staff love my team and I. The amount of positive feedback I’ve gotten from the staff is damn impressive, and thats after only one week. Apparently we’ve put all previous security companies to shame there. We actually patrol the store, we actively engage the staff and get to know them. I know at least 90% of the staff I see daily by name now. And thats after 44 hours of walking the floors there. That may not sound impressive to you, but if you know which store I’m talking about, and just how big it actually is, I’m damn proud of that small achievement. ;-) I’m also rapidly getting familiar with where stuff is around the store. Not because I have to, but because I want to know these things. The staff get an induction course that teaches them. I’m having to do it myself.

If it wasn’t for certain factors, there is no way I’d be working on this site. Simply put, its horrible. 11 hours a day on your feet, most of which is spent constantly standing in the same spot. You do get to patrol the store, but only if there is someone else standing at the door in your stead. For 2 of my 4 days, I’m on my own. So I spend those 11 hours standing at the door putting on a fake smile and greeting people.

As someone close put it, it definitely makes IT worth considering returning to. The tedium and pain are definitely worth more than I’m currently getting paid to put myself through it. So I’m going to sit on this for the next few weeks, then see how the patrols suit me. I’m the senior at the store (although the others keep calling me a seupervisor, which pisses me off,) and I’ll be moving to the night senior role when I go to patrols. Senior on the night patrols doesn’t mean I’m the boss, it just means I’m the one with the phone that deals with the monitoring companies or people locked in car parks and then sends the appropriate guard to events. All that on top of doing my own patrol at the same time. ;-)

The job is definitely not stressful at the moment. Nor do I expect going to night patrols to be stressful either. But it is hard on the body and long hours. At the moment I’m putting in 11 hour days, 4 days a week. When I go to night patrols, I’ll be putting in 12.5 hour shifts, 8 days out of 14. That will make for a good amount of down time, but 100 hours in a week will be a struggle initially.

Its going to be hard. Its going to be very hard, but its definitely worth it to get where I want to be. I could probably achieve it a lot faster, working less hours, if I went back to IT again, but money is not worth the stress that I was under when I was in IT. It’d have to be a pretty sweet package to tempt me back to IT.

I’m going to stop there. Its after 2am now and I’m totally shattered. As in completely and utterly exhausted. But its a good exhausted. I’ll take it. :-)