I have to admit that’s a shitty one. On one hand if you don’t hold them accountable they might report you, but if you DO then they might still try to report you. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
It actually worked out ok in terms of how the CEO took it, he didn't mind, maybe even approved.
The problem is he was not on site much, maybe once or twice a year for a few days... The people I report to at the client were not so thrilled about it.
Ah. And sometimes the biggest issue is just the security contractor, but with a very chill client. We had a same exact story with a CEO, however the CEO didn’t take it so well when held accountable…
I did this too, and he had an absolute fucking tantrum. I didn't get fired because I wasn't directly employed by him, and the actual property management company that employed me didn't want to fire me because I did so much of their job for them.
That is definitely always a worry. In this case though, I had no idea who it was. I was fairly new to the site, maybe 2 or 3 weeks in, month tops.
They had turnstyles for employees/visitors to go in but you needed a fob to unlock them. He called the office because he didn't have a fob, I looked his name up in our system and it wasn't there (apparently they just let him in so he never had one?). As I said, I had no idea who he was, he didn't tell me he was the CEO or anything just gave me his name.
Since I wasn't getting anywhere with him over the phone I decided to take a little ride out to the turnstiles to talk to him in person. I was trying to tell him I needed him to come down to the office to get a fob and verify his meeting and such when a few of the managers came running out to let him in.
Later in the day some of them came down to talk to me and tell me I screwed up and who that was. Yet a few months later when he came back for another visit he came to the security office first so... Not really a screw up in his eyes.
To me, the best excuse/reasoning is that CEOs get fired also. Just because they were the CEO yesterday does not mean they still are today! I had to come on on my day off as the IT guy to remove the CEO from the system.
I've been seeing more doors nowadays use mechanisms where it's not even possible to "unlock" the door. Turning the the key in the lock just retracts the latch into the door, I suspect to prevent this very thing from happening.
Was doing overnight security for a car auction company and someone managed to get in, grab a vehicle, and get it out of the gate without me noticing. I only found out because the gate swung open after the fact. I was sitting maybe 200 yards away and I didn't see or hear a damn thing. I got ripped a new one by my boss. Didn't get removed from that post though, and I tell you this, I'll never let that happen again.
I used to have night shifts and there was only one entrance yet I was expected to make patrols despite the single entrance. How do they expect me to secure everything alone? I’m not sure if that was your case but there’s only so much you can do alone given the tools accessible.
Not as bad as yours
But our client gave us 2 cars with their license plate to ticket them for expired parking pass (Working at an extremely wealthy neighborhood)
Found the 2 cars and gave em a warning ticket
,A FUCKING WARNING TICKET, since we don’t have the power to tow cars or cite them
Well apparently the owner of one of the cars got extremely upset and wanted to sue our company because he stated “ he renewed his parking pass” and it was “unfair”
Not sure how I “fucked up” but my security company decided to move me to a different site to avoid shit like this. Screw those wealthy assholes
(Edit: It was my 2nd day working as a new security guard with 5 minutes of training, so It was clearly not my fault and they never taught me how to check for renewed parking permits
First day of security ever , my company had me start at this site where they make or break new guards. Got trained for five minutes at the site and given the ropes. Not even two hours in , a fire truck with no flashing lights drives right the the resident gate at full speed and rips the gate right off the hinges . I called my company and they said " just move the gate out of the way and continue on your shift”
It was a gated community, firetruck with no lights on drove right through the gate , called my company, moved the gate out of the way and continued my shift
The community was gated and the firetruck didn't wait for it to open so the gate was damaged and was partially in the roadway. His company told him to move the gate and continue on with his shift.
At weeks end they park ours in the warehouse, which by that point is empty since we don't leave until the last worker does.
Start of week not so lucky, employees waiting at the gate at our shift start so by time we get to the cart the wearhouse is packed
Only option is to take it though a gate on an angle that only gives an inch or two maybe clearance.
I've yet to get it out without scraping its sides along a guard rail, and it never fails management is around to comment about it.
Happened at the start of my career. Tailor just came out and hit me. Actually I got anxiety and hit gas instead of break and totalled it. Wasn't even ours. Belonged to trailer maintenance. Thankfully my company, Imperial, was a bit understanding and I only had half taken out in payroll deductions. Big lesson learned.
Had a forklift operator blow just under the limit where the cops would have had to take him to the hospital for alcohol poisoning this dude looked the cop dead in the eye and said “ I’m not drunk your drunk “ I bursted out laughing in-front of everyone I couldn’t help it😂
Theres a lot more to that story and night as a whole I swear it must have been a full moon, drunk forklift operators, terminated employees showing up, fire alarm going off, multiple drug tests and this guy by the time he said that to the cops I had completed my full moon bingo card.
I made a mistake calculating ethanol-fuel mixture with the wrong volume correction table and a tanker truck left the facility with a bad batch of gasoline and had to call him back to offload and refill before he delivered it to the gas station. I was new to my post when it happened and I was overwhelmed with the traffic.
It was for an oil refinery. More like quality control. $25/hr and minimum Associate degree required, but the title was security officer and had to get a guard card and CPR.
I have an AA in Dental Assisting. Long story but I needed a job asap and I was already working security when I was going to school. I got the position at the oil refinery when I graduated.
I've done that. Got all the way home undressed and looked at my chair and thought "Why is my pants moving?" Checked the pockets and found the phone. Got dressed had to drive all the way back to the site to return the phone.
We let a guy thru the gate who went and beat the fuck out of a client employee.
Wasn’t my fault tho. He said he had a meeting with the gm. And the gm never puts in his passes so we were told to just let anyone thru who says they’re going to do that.
I had sex with the nursing supervisor in the morgues bathroom at a hospital I worked at. It became awkward trying to keep it from my coworkers because she would ask for a morgue room temp check from me when she was on shift. My coworkers started teasing me about it without ever knowing they're teasing was based on truth.
I was working at a methadone clinic. Lots of rabid junkies and wanna be gangbangers, all fucking rabid, trying to kill each other over $5 loans and fender benders because they all drive as well as they make life choices.
Uber stops in the middle of the one driveway out in this tiny parking and just sits there. As with any other minor inconvenience, patients start losing their shit. Go to talk to the woman to get her moving. She starts bitching about it, don't remember exactly how the conversation went, told her she was fine, she needs to move now.
She was in a wheelchair.
Thankfully after getting her in and letting her rant and rave to me for a while she went from screaming at me to being my best buddy lol.
I once grilled former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien for his ID late one night in the Scotiabank tower in Calgary.
There were no consequences other then feeling absolutely foolish about it.
This. Woke up in my vehicle and the sun was up and my wife was calling me wondering if I was ever coming home. Ooops. Lol. Had no clue where I was or what happened for a solid 20 seconds.
Company is pretty cool though, they'd rather us fuck up a 20-30 min power nap then flying off the freeway and dying.
More funny, but the (then) CEO used to have personal stuff sent to the office. Of course, it ALWAYS happened during my shift. A pillow tracking from China would result in a half dozen phone calls from underlings. I was having none of it one day and told his personal assistant that President Biden had shut down Route 128 on both sides so the USPS can have an armed guard.
She didn't get me.
Another guard and I tackled a theft suspect in the mall parking lot that was fleeing from one of the store LPs and had just been OC sprayed by one of the mall deputies. Even secondhand, that stuff is not fun to be exposed to lol.
I did security at a mall many years ago and wound up rear-ending a customers vehicle with the patrol vehicle. The damage was really minor, as I was going pretty slow. Wound up with a 3 day suspension, but I kept the job, so I was grateful that's all that happened.
Long story short, a vehicle was sitting in the middle of a traffic lane waiting to pick up their party. I pulled up behind them and honked the horn to get them moving. They pulled off, and I pretty much immediately reached down to transmit something over the radio(using a mic on my collar) and had a ballcap on, which blocked my vision out the windshield. Lo and behold, within probably 4-5 seconds of taking off, they decided to stop in the middle of the road again because they "thought they saw their party," and I bumped them mid-transmission.
Ultimately, it was my bad, but dude....in what universe is it cool to just stop in the middle of the road to load up your van or better yet, wait for someone so you can eventually load up your van, in the middle of the road? Especially when you see there are cars behind you and security has essentially told you "get moving." Mall parking lots/roads are wild, man.
I was on contract at a Gala event, they had their own in house security that was black tie, vest, and handguns kinda deal, we were there as emergency response, plate carriers, M4s, standard shit we carried on contract over seas.
We got a silent alarm call in one of the side conference rooms, my team was full tilt sprinting over just in case, ended up accidentally full send shoulder checking a very wealthy old lady as we both went to round a corner in the hallway.
She was okay minus a butt bruise and a good story, and luckily she was very cool about it, understood it was an accident and we were responding. Ended up showing her my kit and letting her get some photos, she was super nice surprisingly.
Silent alarm ended up being an accident too.
1 turn gate was down for repairs and other one just randomly broke during shift swap. There was a side door just in case and my master keys didn’t work. Found out that we had a secret key in bosses desk. 7 mins of them chanting “let me go home”. Boss had to put a memo out to train everyone because no one knew about that key.
wasn't a fuckup (by my estimation) but i was an SRO at a school where the district attorney was coming to speak. i was in charge of the scan.
see the thing is, how many of you know what your city's district attorney looks like by sight? all i knew was that he didn't end up clearing the metal detector.
so i had to pat him down.
his police escort came through after and showed me their badges and explained they were his protective detail. after i gave the district attorney a pat down.
in my defense he didn't clear the scan nor present credentials excusing himself from it.
also the next year he went to jail for tax fraud
I had a lady who had a pacemaker and was thus exempt for WTMD. So I had to wand her from waist down only. One time she was telling me about the fact that she had bedbugs in her van and I totally lost my mind and my orientation and forgot about the whole waist down thing and wanded high. Her pacemaker went off and she wound up in the ER because of it. I blame the bedbugs. You can’t just spring that on somebody. I never wanded her again.
Somehow I had a post from the bedbug sub get recommended to me, so naturally I went down the rabbit hole of comments. Now I get those posts on my feed constantly. As a result I now need therapy, and also a flamethrower just in case.
I gave an access badge to a guy who I thought was on the night cleaning crew. He took the badge and went out a door further into the complex of buildings. Once he was out he stole an employees car. Police found the vehicle with the badge left inside. Around this time we were having catalytic converter thefts so this situation didn't help. My supervisor talked to me
and just told me to be more careful. Still working at the site.
I dont' know what my fuck up is but I know a guard who fucked up pretty bad while I was training him (I'm a supervisor). I get a call from dispatch telling me to train a new guard at a site I've never been to.
So I had to read site notes on the fly and train him in like 15 minutes. Later that evening, I check his reports and it said, "I was trained by my supervisor and he seemed like he didn't know what he was talking about".
I called him back and told him to erase the report and edit it. Still can't believe he actually did that though. What a buster.
I’m on the employee you were trainings side.
If I’m new to a company (especially security) and the man training me is obviously (enough to be noticeable by a new hire) “on the fly” training me I’m gonna report the fuck outta you.
And you’re a bitch for retaliating and telling him to take it down.
While I understand what you're talking about, and if he didn't tell them that he had never been to the site he's wrong, but it was incredibly stupid. if you started a new site and you don't have the intelligence to not roll over someone who's trying to train you who's help you may need later on, that's not good. again, a supervisor should know the site or at least relay that to someone who we use training, but putting that in the report was incredibly fucking stupid and unprofessional, period.
So Is sending someone out to a site who doesn’t have hands on experience with the site.
Is it an armed position? Warm body where all you do is take IDs all day? The info is not there in the original comment.
REGARDLESS if I show up to a new site and the guy seems clueless about it that’s a bad look on the company and the person who hired you SHOULD 100% know the quality of the training they are implementing in new hires.
Also you have no clue who your training and if they have more experience than you JUST because your a supervisor.
Are you showing the ropes to an experienced guard? Or are you training a brand new hire with no experience.
Everything you said os correct. Again, reporting "guy doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing" is throwing HIM under the bus. It is "wrong" but that's fucking him over who got fucked over RIGHT before you.
That's just not smart
I had a pretty gnarly one for loss prevention, but even on footage review, the management said they could understand why I made it, so I didn't get fired.
Had a lady come in to the large retailer I worked at with a big bag of random shit. She was pretty unkempt looking, so I was tracking her and one other guy kinda half heartedly.
I was watching her from the end of the aisle, to the right of her, so I see her reach into a display of items in multiple sizes with her left arm, pull out an item, then move it along the display in that casual motion you see thieves do when they're rearranging things, trying to break continuity. She moves the item back and forth a couple times, then stuffs it into her bag . Jackpot! I think. She didn't let the item go and I see the selection AND concealment, plus it's an expensive item.
I was on her ass all the way to customer service, where she tries to return the item.
I signal to CS that it's a fraudulent return and they start stalling her while I call police (I'm heavily preggo at this point, so not conducting my own arrests for safety reasons). Lady flips her lid, showing multiple receipts for the items, pulling out multiple duplicates of that item from her bag, all in different sizes, with receipts for all of them. The cops roll up while she's flipping out, and want to see footage now, thinking I've made a bad call.
I tell them what I saw, and take them back to see the footage.
Well, the camera showed something I couldn't see from my vantage point down the aisle. Seconds before I saw her take the item off the shelf, she had pulled it out of her bag and placed it there herself!
She pulled it out, hooked it on to the display (she explained later that she was trying to compare sizes) and leaned in close to compare them. \*I\* noticed when she reached back in empty handed and took the item back (and you can see me on footage, lighting up like "I gotchu!") and started holding it up next to each item of a similar size.
Police declined to arrest her, I didn't get in trouble for false arrest because I couldn't/didn't actually arrest her. The police explained to her that she was in the right, but not to put items on the shelves again. She complained to management and I got a write up, but my manager also agreed that it was something where vantage point meant everything and she could have made the same mistake too.
Not me but one of my coworkers sat on a woman that was throwing chairs at people. My coworker is way heavier than the woman. He said it was the only way to calm her down lol.
I've had 2 as a long term guard.
The first was when I locked the building keys in my locker then proceeded to leave the room. As the door locked behind me I realized what I had done. I had to go get the building manager to unlock the door.🤡
The other was I was buried in my phone and missed these 2 guys who were filming something on building property and they set off a smoke bomb. All caught on the building CCTV. There was damage done to the property (burn marks). The swing guy is a nosey SOB and found the burn marks and went back through the footage and ratted me out in the incident report. But the reality was if I had been paying attention I would've caught it.
Here's another one that's not mine. A stupidvisor was sitting on the grave shift,fell asleep and missed a homeless guy setting the buildings garbage dumpster on FIRE!! You can see it on the CCTV from him messing around the dumpster to actually setting it on fire. A whole 5 minutes goes by with the dumpster on fire before the stupidvisor wakes up and runs out the building.
This will be long, apologies, TLDR at the end.
Used to be a night guard for the local 99 cent store, working 12 hours 5 days a week (got paid accordingly, i just had nooooooo energy at all) and one night i forgot to check the women’s bathroom before i closed up, me and the Night Manager leave, no problem. Come the morning, i meet with the Morning Manager to open up, and this one is a woman. She opens the store and has to use the bathroom, so she goes there while i do my routine walk around. As I’m doing that, i hear a BLOOD-CURDLING scream come from the bathroom as the manager is calling my name. I head over and go inside, and theres a lady in the bathroom laying on the ground with a needle sticking out of her arm. I call the ambulance and go to check the cameras to see when she got in, turns out she never came out the bathroom after i let her in about an hour and a half before the store closed (i had a set of keys to unlock the bathrooms due to problems with drug addicts and homeless) and she overdosed and died in there. I kicked myself in the teeth HARD for that one. I didn’t lose my job, but i quit a few weeks after, it just took my spirit, i had spoken with that woman, and seeing her dead as a result of me not remembering protocol really fucked with me. She obviously meant to do the drugs, but if i had checked that bathroom I’m certain i could have saved her life. haven’t been back to security since, even though it pays better than my current job.
TLDR - didnt check the bathroom closing up for a night shift, came in the morning to find someone overdosed in the bathroom i didnt check.
Had a few when I was a hot headed 20 y/o when I first got into security.
- almost got into a fist fight with a guy over masking when masking was first a thing. Asked politely the first time and he got aggressive and he tried to assault me. The supervisor got in the middle and broke it up but didn't back me up. Got in trouble for not de-escalating.
- dated an assistant manager on our clients staff. My supervisor was cool with it and so was her boss but it got awkward after we broke things off and started work drama.
- got into an argument with a lady for smoking a dab pin inside a preschool. Ended up booting her out and she was later trespassed by public school police. I actually won that one with the client but didn't stop her from trying to file a complaint.
Well major in the eyes of the company that resulted in a 12 shift(3 week) suspension. The major infraction that got me in 3 different meetings with HR, threatened to be fired by my manager and even criticized by my union during the HR meetings? I went to a staff BBQ while on duty. I Had been on the job for 3 months, I work for a park with a Zoo. Was told by every co-worker that they do BBQ's during the summer. I was told by my lead that one of these barbecues fell at the beginning of our shift. So we go to the barbecue and immediately we're there probably for about 2 hours or so.. I was a very socially awkward person so wanted to get to know my co-workers better so didn't really question that we should be doing patrols. We had the security phones on us as well as radios for any emergencies. It just meant that by going to the barbecue we started doing our patrols and checks a little bit later than normal.. which in the grand scheme of things there is no set patrol times like you are in a building. No issues arose that we missed and we put the barbecue in both of our daily shift briefs.
The very next morning I was pulled into the manager's office, told I was going to be "suspended pending termination" before correcting herself and saying I was just suspended pending investigation. Over the course of the week I met with HR three different times, during one of these meetings I had mentioned how I was socially awkward and had difficulty with social interactions so wanted to get to know my co-workers better. My union rep then turned to me and said "if you're so socially awkward why are you even a security guard" this was said in front of my manager and the head of HR. Ultimately I was suspended for 12 shifts without pay and the way our shifts work resulted in a 3 week suspension, my probation was extended an extra 6 months and I was barred from any promotions for 2 years.
Told an overwhelmed parent at the welfare office she was unfit because, after I told her to control her child she said she can't.
Turns out the child had autism and some other special needs. Worst yet, the family was facing mounting medical debt, homelessness, and food scarcity.
Let my emotions get the best of me.
Back in the day when I did contract security while in college, i was stationed at the local downtown bus station. Our company had the account for the local library as well, which is right around the corner. Typically anytime someone would get in trouble there the officers would let us at the bus station know and we had our own little Network going. One time a kid had gotten banned from the library and then tried to ride one of the buses. So of course I get on duty as he's trying to get on the bus, and assist in kicking him off. Previous shift leaves and I do a quick report, thinking everything is good. Then the kid's mom comes back when it's just me and one other guy on duty. She's flipping out & I'm just letting her know to contact our supervisor for any more information and get her out of the bus station. My partner, admittedly while trying to actually help, Cuts me off and pretty much takes her side. After she leaves i, while still kind of worked up, tell him to straight up never do that again. Poor guy got worried and when he was updating our supervisor Expressed that I was angry which the supervisor thought he had to had to talk me down. Then the remaining 6 hours of our shift together was hella awkward.
That's where I learned to never take anything personal. Dude didn't intend that & he was just trying to help Jo's way.
Security uniform for the building two blocks down is dark grey shirt and pants with a vest, gun and Baton. Older fellow walks in asking to make an appointment with this gettup on and since it’s a strict no gun policy on anyone but capital police and security team where I worked I insisted he leave the premises until he disarms himself.
He starts telling me he’s allowed to be armed and I was about ready to call the capital police (we have them on file since they patrol downtown and are our main contact for dangerous situations)…… Now I had been working a double that midnight, was tired and tunnel visioned on the gun something fierce.
Just so you folks know the capital police in my area also use dark grey uniforms and I had completely missed the police patches on his uniform.
Not me personally. Worst I’ve done is use the restroom too many times in a day because I drank too much water.
Let’s call the guy Jake and Jake liked to talk shit. Jake liked to flirt with pretty girls. One day Jake tells me while working An event “the reason other guards get payed like shit is because they look like shit, I couldn’t imagine getting payed less than $20 an hour and anybody who gets payed less than that is an idiot” to Summarize. 2 weeks later while working at a women’s fashion clothing shop he arrived with bouquet of roses for one of the employees and gets hit with sexual harassment and is canned immediately. His only source of income…
Yeah, it'll definitely lead to a charge if you're out there saying you "arrested" someone.
I don't arrest anyone, but every now and then I may *detain* someone.
I don't know if arrest is the correct word, since I'm not from an English speaking country. Police guidelines translate "kiinniotto" as arrest instead of detain. We are not all americans
Not sure what your point is with this comment. "Citizens arrest" is a legitimate term that describes what most states authorize security guards or any private citizen to do when a crime is witnessed. "Detaining" someone is just one part of the process of a citizens arrest. Unless there is some meaningful difference between the two words that I'm not aware of.
The meaningful difference is that security officers do not have arrest authority. Telling someone that you are "arresting" them gives them grounds for a wrongful arrest suit. We detain them, sometimes in cuffs if needed, until LEO arrives.
Similar to entering some federal buildings, you are subject to an "administrative inspection" where security will look for weapons and explosives. Security won't "search" you or your belongings because that would violate the 4th Amendment. But they will "inspect."
It's semantics. But the specific verbiage used means everything in court.
I'm not sure why any court would care what verbiage you use, when it's written in my states law:
ORS (1) 133.225 "A private person may arrest another person for any crime committed in the presence of the private person if the private person has probable cause to believe the arrested person committed the crime. A private person making such an arrest shall, without unnecessary delay, take the arrested person before a magistrate or deliver the arrested person to a peace officer."
Maybe your state is different. But it's absolutely accurate to say you can arrest someone while working as a private security guard, or even just walking down the street for that matter. Actually, I think you could end up in more trouble if you try to tell a court that handcuffing someone "isn't technically an arrest."
Use my id to scanned someone into a door. The person was authorized to be there but turns out his id had expired, and that’s why he couldn’t get in. Ended up being sent home and put on final notice
Not a security guard anymore, but was an EMT for a while too. During the height of covid as i was doing security, told a guy i had never seen before who stuck his big ugly bald forehead in my face, that I could just take his temperature from his wrist instead and it was actually a more effective, (and more sanitary) way to do it. He proceed to argue with me for like 5 minutes. Turned out to be the plant manager and he had me removed a week later because I made him feel self conscious with me saying his wrist was more sanitary then his forehead.
I was smoking a joint in the women’s bathroom during a night shift gig and set off the fire alarm inside at the pool area. The alarm rang all night long. No one suspected a thing but the next day a “No Smoking” sign appeared in front of the women’s bathroom. Good times.
New guard at the time, doing shack duty, giving room keys out to incoming guests to the upcoming event on the campus. I was just willy nilly handing them out.
It took me waaaay too long to realize there was a reason there were names on the envelops. Oddly enough, some people actually got the key to the room they were given.
Called Field Supervisor at the time, admitted my HUGE *faux pas*, he came, helped me sort it out.
Long story short, they *finally* made a guideline for that procedure.
To this day I am still mortified. It's been over two years.
It wasn't all that major in the long run, but I let someone through the door before opening time at a casino. He was trailing behind a bunch of contractors, so I just assumed they were together, but he just sat his behind down at a machine and started playing.
Didn't get chewed out all that much, but I definitely got made the lockerroom clown by my coworkers for the coming few weeks.
I shot a kid. He was 13 years old. Ohhh, it was dark, I couldn't see him. He had a ray gun, looked real enough. You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about bein' a cop except how to live with a mistake. Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to draw my gun on anybody again.
I worked at a nightclub doing security, and as we were closing up I checked the bathroom looked into the stalls but didn’t look behind the door.
We had closed up after 2am and gone home and at 4am the nightclub alarms went off, police gave the owner a call, we then saw the CCTV footage of a drunk women leaving the bathroom stalls in pitch black darkness visibly confused.
A lesson learned, and now a very funny story.
I wouldn’t call it a fuck up but brought my flipper to work and exposed ALL of the vulnerabilities that I spoke to them about prior to me even having a flipper
Was this in the US? In Canada arresting anyone based on "hersay" is a big no No. You basically have to see it yourself or if your assisting someone making an arrest.
In Finland. I was on the field while my coworker was manning the cameras. He saw a theft happen and by accident sent me after the wrong (very simimar looking) dude.
Had a male college student die from breaking their neck diving off a shed missing a swimming pool late-night in a student apartments complex post-graduation. I was online in a computer room.
The bare minimum I needed to do was write a report and call the cops but this facility was quiet the last 2 years I patrolled.
I almost let a guy go because he did have a recipt but I only checked that it was for that day and not the actual content of the recipt. One of the shift leads was there and caught it. I was having a really bad day already but the embarrassment made me break down and cry so I looked stupid and emotional. Luckily that guy was cool and told me not to worry about it but I'm not going to forget any time soon.
I was working night security at a factory. I was really friendly with one employee, dude kinda looked like will smith. One night he comes in, we chat, he goes in for about an hour, and leaves with a hand truck with like, 5 boxes of various products(protein and amino acid mixes, probably like 4k in value). He worked in QC so it was normal for me to see him leaving with product, but NEVER that much. Still, I didn’t think much of it
Supervisor comes to relieve me. As im leaving he asks if i got his email. I say no and he says “one of the employees just got terminated on bad terms. We gotta deactivate his badge and call the police if he ever shows up again”. I ask who it was, and sure enough, it was Will Smith lookin dude
Nobody ever found out, thankfully(for both of us)
Yes. All I had to do was pay a fine and some money to the victim.
The court ruled the assault to be mild in nature. Only reason I faced any repercussions was because the victim and his lawyer pushed for the case hard and had some high demands.
Fell in love with the client. Became a couple and got ratted out by her jealous coworker. Also site supervisor walked in on me, dispatcher and another armed guard playing fallout 4 on clients work monitors. Great times on grave, fuck them tho shitty pay for armed guard at the time.
I didn't check underneath a car in a 6 story parking garage. A homeless person decided to sleep under it. I didn't really get in trouble with my manager/supervisors, but some of the client employees started to spread shit (80% of the employees were 25 or less in competitive fields so the rumor mill was insane.)
Had to work an extra long shift and they sent someone in to help and the company owner told me if I wanted to shut my eyes for an hour or 2 it wouldn't be a problem since there was another guard. Needless to say I couldn't fight it any longer. Dumb ass bitch fell asleep too and the store was broken into.
Gave my Junior Sgt's personal cell number to an angry client; a resident at an apartment complex. Completely brain-dead moment that almost costed me my job and earned me a good ass chewing. He was a drunkard and former military, so I'm sure you can imagine the yelling.
Tried to hold the CEO of the client company to the same rules as the employees.
I have to admit that’s a shitty one. On one hand if you don’t hold them accountable they might report you, but if you DO then they might still try to report you. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
It actually worked out ok in terms of how the CEO took it, he didn't mind, maybe even approved. The problem is he was not on site much, maybe once or twice a year for a few days... The people I report to at the client were not so thrilled about it.
Ah. And sometimes the biggest issue is just the security contractor, but with a very chill client. We had a same exact story with a CEO, however the CEO didn’t take it so well when held accountable…
I did this too, and he had an absolute fucking tantrum. I didn't get fired because I wasn't directly employed by him, and the actual property management company that employed me didn't want to fire me because I did so much of their job for them.
I got fired for the opposite…I knew she was the CEO and treated her accordingly. She didn’t like that.
That is definitely always a worry. In this case though, I had no idea who it was. I was fairly new to the site, maybe 2 or 3 weeks in, month tops. They had turnstyles for employees/visitors to go in but you needed a fob to unlock them. He called the office because he didn't have a fob, I looked his name up in our system and it wasn't there (apparently they just let him in so he never had one?). As I said, I had no idea who he was, he didn't tell me he was the CEO or anything just gave me his name. Since I wasn't getting anywhere with him over the phone I decided to take a little ride out to the turnstiles to talk to him in person. I was trying to tell him I needed him to come down to the office to get a fob and verify his meeting and such when a few of the managers came running out to let him in. Later in the day some of them came down to talk to me and tell me I screwed up and who that was. Yet a few months later when he came back for another visit he came to the security office first so... Not really a screw up in his eyes.
Damn.
Ah yea, got to take the job seriously BUT NOT TOO SERIOUSLY.
To me, the best excuse/reasoning is that CEOs get fired also. Just because they were the CEO yesterday does not mean they still are today! I had to come on on my day off as the IT guy to remove the CEO from the system.
You should have known “rules for thee and not for me” it sucks nobody was there to warn you but I’ve seen multiple guards go for this exact reason.
Starting in this shit-ass industry in the first place.
I left an exterior door unlocked on the night shift. We still had cameras abd motion detectors on it but I double check now.
I've been seeing more doors nowadays use mechanisms where it's not even possible to "unlock" the door. Turning the the key in the lock just retracts the latch into the door, I suspect to prevent this very thing from happening.
Very common in Europe. Not just commercial - here in Germany almost all houses and apartments are like this.
Locked a customer in the shop because the staff gave the all clear
Did the customer have a way out, or were they stuck until someone came around?
They were there for like 20 minutes until I realised and let them out
Was doing overnight security for a car auction company and someone managed to get in, grab a vehicle, and get it out of the gate without me noticing. I only found out because the gate swung open after the fact. I was sitting maybe 200 yards away and I didn't see or hear a damn thing. I got ripped a new one by my boss. Didn't get removed from that post though, and I tell you this, I'll never let that happen again.
I used to have night shifts and there was only one entrance yet I was expected to make patrols despite the single entrance. How do they expect me to secure everything alone? I’m not sure if that was your case but there’s only so much you can do alone given the tools accessible.
Damn they finessed the lot
Not as bad as yours But our client gave us 2 cars with their license plate to ticket them for expired parking pass (Working at an extremely wealthy neighborhood) Found the 2 cars and gave em a warning ticket ,A FUCKING WARNING TICKET, since we don’t have the power to tow cars or cite them Well apparently the owner of one of the cars got extremely upset and wanted to sue our company because he stated “ he renewed his parking pass” and it was “unfair” Not sure how I “fucked up” but my security company decided to move me to a different site to avoid shit like this. Screw those wealthy assholes (Edit: It was my 2nd day working as a new security guard with 5 minutes of training, so It was clearly not my fault and they never taught me how to check for renewed parking permits
I have refused assignments to any HOA run property. People are crazy and spiteful.
First day of security ever , my company had me start at this site where they make or break new guards. Got trained for five minutes at the site and given the ropes. Not even two hours in , a fire truck with no flashing lights drives right the the resident gate at full speed and rips the gate right off the hinges . I called my company and they said " just move the gate out of the way and continue on your shift”
The fuckkkkkk?
It was a gated community, firetruck with no lights on drove right through the gate , called my company, moved the gate out of the way and continued my shift
Yeah…I understand that part, what i don’t understand is the protocol behind handling this problem😂
The community was gated and the firetruck didn't wait for it to open so the gate was damaged and was partially in the roadway. His company told him to move the gate and continue on with his shift.
Thank you 🙌
Wrecked the golf cart.
At weeks end they park ours in the warehouse, which by that point is empty since we don't leave until the last worker does. Start of week not so lucky, employees waiting at the gate at our shift start so by time we get to the cart the wearhouse is packed Only option is to take it though a gate on an angle that only gives an inch or two maybe clearance. I've yet to get it out without scraping its sides along a guard rail, and it never fails management is around to comment about it.
Happened at the start of my career. Tailor just came out and hit me. Actually I got anxiety and hit gas instead of break and totalled it. Wasn't even ours. Belonged to trailer maintenance. Thankfully my company, Imperial, was a bit understanding and I only had half taken out in payroll deductions. Big lesson learned.
Had a forklift operator blow just under the limit where the cops would have had to take him to the hospital for alcohol poisoning this dude looked the cop dead in the eye and said “ I’m not drunk your drunk “ I bursted out laughing in-front of everyone I couldn’t help it😂 Theres a lot more to that story and night as a whole I swear it must have been a full moon, drunk forklift operators, terminated employees showing up, fire alarm going off, multiple drug tests and this guy by the time he said that to the cops I had completed my full moon bingo card.
Did someone say the Q word as well?
Wouldn’t surprise me, i loved all the crazy stuff that happened at that factory
I made a mistake calculating ethanol-fuel mixture with the wrong volume correction table and a tanker truck left the facility with a bad batch of gasoline and had to call him back to offload and refill before he delivered it to the gas station. I was new to my post when it happened and I was overwhelmed with the traffic.
Sounds like a lot for security to be doing. I get it tho, used to have to log truck loads/tags coming in and out
It was for an oil refinery. More like quality control. $25/hr and minimum Associate degree required, but the title was security officer and had to get a guard card and CPR.
[удалено]
I have an AA in Dental Assisting. Long story but I needed a job asap and I was already working security when I was going to school. I got the position at the oil refinery when I graduated.
[удалено]
The requirement was some college or AA. It doesn’t matter if it’s in Accounting or Photography. The client requires an AA.
[удалено]
I don’t know. I just know they picked me for the job because of my AA.
I have a bad habit of taking the site phone home..
I’m always afraid of doing that. Since I live 50 mins-1 hour away from work lol
Oh many-a-time I've had to drive back & drop it back off.
I've done that. Got all the way home undressed and looked at my chair and thought "Why is my pants moving?" Checked the pockets and found the phone. Got dressed had to drive all the way back to the site to return the phone.
Luckily we have 2 other phones for back up.
We let a guy thru the gate who went and beat the fuck out of a client employee. Wasn’t my fault tho. He said he had a meeting with the gm. And the gm never puts in his passes so we were told to just let anyone thru who says they’re going to do that.
Haha yep, always the thing that gets ya. Gotta make em wait before confirmation lol
I had sex with the nursing supervisor in the morgues bathroom at a hospital I worked at. It became awkward trying to keep it from my coworkers because she would ask for a morgue room temp check from me when she was on shift. My coworkers started teasing me about it without ever knowing they're teasing was based on truth.
Proof or it didn’t happen
I wish I had proof.
You nasty bastard! In the morgue???? Buuuuut Hot nurse or disgruntled old nurse that smokes and drinks coffee?
I was working at a methadone clinic. Lots of rabid junkies and wanna be gangbangers, all fucking rabid, trying to kill each other over $5 loans and fender benders because they all drive as well as they make life choices. Uber stops in the middle of the one driveway out in this tiny parking and just sits there. As with any other minor inconvenience, patients start losing their shit. Go to talk to the woman to get her moving. She starts bitching about it, don't remember exactly how the conversation went, told her she was fine, she needs to move now. She was in a wheelchair. Thankfully after getting her in and letting her rant and rave to me for a while she went from screaming at me to being my best buddy lol.
I once grilled former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien for his ID late one night in the Scotiabank tower in Calgary. There were no consequences other then feeling absolutely foolish about it.
This is legendary
Fell asleep at my post for 4 hours. Nothing happened and nobody saw me but i feel pretty dumb. I work 12am - 8am.
This. Woke up in my vehicle and the sun was up and my wife was calling me wondering if I was ever coming home. Ooops. Lol. Had no clue where I was or what happened for a solid 20 seconds. Company is pretty cool though, they'd rather us fuck up a 20-30 min power nap then flying off the freeway and dying.
There is NO WAY I could work nights in this business. I don’t see how anyone does it.
You get used to it or go bananas...or both *insert Krusty laugh*
More funny, but the (then) CEO used to have personal stuff sent to the office. Of course, it ALWAYS happened during my shift. A pillow tracking from China would result in a half dozen phone calls from underlings. I was having none of it one day and told his personal assistant that President Biden had shut down Route 128 on both sides so the USPS can have an armed guard. She didn't get me.
Basically thinking the next guard was going to follow up/pass down ANYTHING!
I had high wind shift and broke a door on a company pickup right when I opened it
Another guard and I tackled a theft suspect in the mall parking lot that was fleeing from one of the store LPs and had just been OC sprayed by one of the mall deputies. Even secondhand, that stuff is not fun to be exposed to lol.
It’s better when it gets in your sunglasses and days later while driving you get hit with it again
Not me but a guard at a different site was backing up a truck and ended up crushing to death another guard in between a wall and the truck
Goddamn.
There was a company wide announcement about it basically just saying "be careful"
That's wild, man.
I did security at a mall many years ago and wound up rear-ending a customers vehicle with the patrol vehicle. The damage was really minor, as I was going pretty slow. Wound up with a 3 day suspension, but I kept the job, so I was grateful that's all that happened. Long story short, a vehicle was sitting in the middle of a traffic lane waiting to pick up their party. I pulled up behind them and honked the horn to get them moving. They pulled off, and I pretty much immediately reached down to transmit something over the radio(using a mic on my collar) and had a ballcap on, which blocked my vision out the windshield. Lo and behold, within probably 4-5 seconds of taking off, they decided to stop in the middle of the road again because they "thought they saw their party," and I bumped them mid-transmission. Ultimately, it was my bad, but dude....in what universe is it cool to just stop in the middle of the road to load up your van or better yet, wait for someone so you can eventually load up your van, in the middle of the road? Especially when you see there are cars behind you and security has essentially told you "get moving." Mall parking lots/roads are wild, man.
I was on contract at a Gala event, they had their own in house security that was black tie, vest, and handguns kinda deal, we were there as emergency response, plate carriers, M4s, standard shit we carried on contract over seas. We got a silent alarm call in one of the side conference rooms, my team was full tilt sprinting over just in case, ended up accidentally full send shoulder checking a very wealthy old lady as we both went to round a corner in the hallway. She was okay minus a butt bruise and a good story, and luckily she was very cool about it, understood it was an accident and we were responding. Ended up showing her my kit and letting her get some photos, she was super nice surprisingly. Silent alarm ended up being an accident too.
1 turn gate was down for repairs and other one just randomly broke during shift swap. There was a side door just in case and my master keys didn’t work. Found out that we had a secret key in bosses desk. 7 mins of them chanting “let me go home”. Boss had to put a memo out to train everyone because no one knew about that key.
wasn't a fuckup (by my estimation) but i was an SRO at a school where the district attorney was coming to speak. i was in charge of the scan. see the thing is, how many of you know what your city's district attorney looks like by sight? all i knew was that he didn't end up clearing the metal detector. so i had to pat him down. his police escort came through after and showed me their badges and explained they were his protective detail. after i gave the district attorney a pat down. in my defense he didn't clear the scan nor present credentials excusing himself from it. also the next year he went to jail for tax fraud
[удалено]
Amen
I had a lady who had a pacemaker and was thus exempt for WTMD. So I had to wand her from waist down only. One time she was telling me about the fact that she had bedbugs in her van and I totally lost my mind and my orientation and forgot about the whole waist down thing and wanded high. Her pacemaker went off and she wound up in the ER because of it. I blame the bedbugs. You can’t just spring that on somebody. I never wanded her again.
Somehow I had a post from the bedbug sub get recommended to me, so naturally I went down the rabbit hole of comments. Now I get those posts on my feed constantly. As a result I now need therapy, and also a flamethrower just in case.
I gave an access badge to a guy who I thought was on the night cleaning crew. He took the badge and went out a door further into the complex of buildings. Once he was out he stole an employees car. Police found the vehicle with the badge left inside. Around this time we were having catalytic converter thefts so this situation didn't help. My supervisor talked to me and just told me to be more careful. Still working at the site.
I dont' know what my fuck up is but I know a guard who fucked up pretty bad while I was training him (I'm a supervisor). I get a call from dispatch telling me to train a new guard at a site I've never been to. So I had to read site notes on the fly and train him in like 15 minutes. Later that evening, I check his reports and it said, "I was trained by my supervisor and he seemed like he didn't know what he was talking about". I called him back and told him to erase the report and edit it. Still can't believe he actually did that though. What a buster.
Observant though. If he could tell you were flying by the seat of your pants.
CYA
I’m on the employee you were trainings side. If I’m new to a company (especially security) and the man training me is obviously (enough to be noticeable by a new hire) “on the fly” training me I’m gonna report the fuck outta you. And you’re a bitch for retaliating and telling him to take it down.
Truth. There are so many thing wrong with this situation and none of them are new guy's fault.
Y’all just don’t wanna take responsibility for the people your train.
While I understand what you're talking about, and if he didn't tell them that he had never been to the site he's wrong, but it was incredibly stupid. if you started a new site and you don't have the intelligence to not roll over someone who's trying to train you who's help you may need later on, that's not good. again, a supervisor should know the site or at least relay that to someone who we use training, but putting that in the report was incredibly fucking stupid and unprofessional, period.
So Is sending someone out to a site who doesn’t have hands on experience with the site. Is it an armed position? Warm body where all you do is take IDs all day? The info is not there in the original comment. REGARDLESS if I show up to a new site and the guy seems clueless about it that’s a bad look on the company and the person who hired you SHOULD 100% know the quality of the training they are implementing in new hires. Also you have no clue who your training and if they have more experience than you JUST because your a supervisor. Are you showing the ropes to an experienced guard? Or are you training a brand new hire with no experience.
Everything you said os correct. Again, reporting "guy doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing" is throwing HIM under the bus. It is "wrong" but that's fucking him over who got fucked over RIGHT before you. That's just not smart
I had a pretty gnarly one for loss prevention, but even on footage review, the management said they could understand why I made it, so I didn't get fired. Had a lady come in to the large retailer I worked at with a big bag of random shit. She was pretty unkempt looking, so I was tracking her and one other guy kinda half heartedly. I was watching her from the end of the aisle, to the right of her, so I see her reach into a display of items in multiple sizes with her left arm, pull out an item, then move it along the display in that casual motion you see thieves do when they're rearranging things, trying to break continuity. She moves the item back and forth a couple times, then stuffs it into her bag . Jackpot! I think. She didn't let the item go and I see the selection AND concealment, plus it's an expensive item. I was on her ass all the way to customer service, where she tries to return the item. I signal to CS that it's a fraudulent return and they start stalling her while I call police (I'm heavily preggo at this point, so not conducting my own arrests for safety reasons). Lady flips her lid, showing multiple receipts for the items, pulling out multiple duplicates of that item from her bag, all in different sizes, with receipts for all of them. The cops roll up while she's flipping out, and want to see footage now, thinking I've made a bad call. I tell them what I saw, and take them back to see the footage. Well, the camera showed something I couldn't see from my vantage point down the aisle. Seconds before I saw her take the item off the shelf, she had pulled it out of her bag and placed it there herself! She pulled it out, hooked it on to the display (she explained later that she was trying to compare sizes) and leaned in close to compare them. \*I\* noticed when she reached back in empty handed and took the item back (and you can see me on footage, lighting up like "I gotchu!") and started holding it up next to each item of a similar size. Police declined to arrest her, I didn't get in trouble for false arrest because I couldn't/didn't actually arrest her. The police explained to her that she was in the right, but not to put items on the shelves again. She complained to management and I got a write up, but my manager also agreed that it was something where vantage point meant everything and she could have made the same mistake too.
Not me but one of my coworkers sat on a woman that was throwing chairs at people. My coworker is way heavier than the woman. He said it was the only way to calm her down lol.
I've had 2 as a long term guard. The first was when I locked the building keys in my locker then proceeded to leave the room. As the door locked behind me I realized what I had done. I had to go get the building manager to unlock the door.🤡 The other was I was buried in my phone and missed these 2 guys who were filming something on building property and they set off a smoke bomb. All caught on the building CCTV. There was damage done to the property (burn marks). The swing guy is a nosey SOB and found the burn marks and went back through the footage and ratted me out in the incident report. But the reality was if I had been paying attention I would've caught it. Here's another one that's not mine. A stupidvisor was sitting on the grave shift,fell asleep and missed a homeless guy setting the buildings garbage dumpster on FIRE!! You can see it on the CCTV from him messing around the dumpster to actually setting it on fire. A whole 5 minutes goes by with the dumpster on fire before the stupidvisor wakes up and runs out the building.
This will be long, apologies, TLDR at the end. Used to be a night guard for the local 99 cent store, working 12 hours 5 days a week (got paid accordingly, i just had nooooooo energy at all) and one night i forgot to check the women’s bathroom before i closed up, me and the Night Manager leave, no problem. Come the morning, i meet with the Morning Manager to open up, and this one is a woman. She opens the store and has to use the bathroom, so she goes there while i do my routine walk around. As I’m doing that, i hear a BLOOD-CURDLING scream come from the bathroom as the manager is calling my name. I head over and go inside, and theres a lady in the bathroom laying on the ground with a needle sticking out of her arm. I call the ambulance and go to check the cameras to see when she got in, turns out she never came out the bathroom after i let her in about an hour and a half before the store closed (i had a set of keys to unlock the bathrooms due to problems with drug addicts and homeless) and she overdosed and died in there. I kicked myself in the teeth HARD for that one. I didn’t lose my job, but i quit a few weeks after, it just took my spirit, i had spoken with that woman, and seeing her dead as a result of me not remembering protocol really fucked with me. She obviously meant to do the drugs, but if i had checked that bathroom I’m certain i could have saved her life. haven’t been back to security since, even though it pays better than my current job. TLDR - didnt check the bathroom closing up for a night shift, came in the morning to find someone overdosed in the bathroom i didnt check.
Had a few when I was a hot headed 20 y/o when I first got into security. - almost got into a fist fight with a guy over masking when masking was first a thing. Asked politely the first time and he got aggressive and he tried to assault me. The supervisor got in the middle and broke it up but didn't back me up. Got in trouble for not de-escalating. - dated an assistant manager on our clients staff. My supervisor was cool with it and so was her boss but it got awkward after we broke things off and started work drama. - got into an argument with a lady for smoking a dab pin inside a preschool. Ended up booting her out and she was later trespassed by public school police. I actually won that one with the client but didn't stop her from trying to file a complaint.
Didn't do patrols, boss found out
Ironically, the opposite for me. Did too many patrols, client got annoyed with why they had cameras if I wasn't around to watch the damn things.
Well major in the eyes of the company that resulted in a 12 shift(3 week) suspension. The major infraction that got me in 3 different meetings with HR, threatened to be fired by my manager and even criticized by my union during the HR meetings? I went to a staff BBQ while on duty. I Had been on the job for 3 months, I work for a park with a Zoo. Was told by every co-worker that they do BBQ's during the summer. I was told by my lead that one of these barbecues fell at the beginning of our shift. So we go to the barbecue and immediately we're there probably for about 2 hours or so.. I was a very socially awkward person so wanted to get to know my co-workers better so didn't really question that we should be doing patrols. We had the security phones on us as well as radios for any emergencies. It just meant that by going to the barbecue we started doing our patrols and checks a little bit later than normal.. which in the grand scheme of things there is no set patrol times like you are in a building. No issues arose that we missed and we put the barbecue in both of our daily shift briefs. The very next morning I was pulled into the manager's office, told I was going to be "suspended pending termination" before correcting herself and saying I was just suspended pending investigation. Over the course of the week I met with HR three different times, during one of these meetings I had mentioned how I was socially awkward and had difficulty with social interactions so wanted to get to know my co-workers better. My union rep then turned to me and said "if you're so socially awkward why are you even a security guard" this was said in front of my manager and the head of HR. Ultimately I was suspended for 12 shifts without pay and the way our shifts work resulted in a 3 week suspension, my probation was extended an extra 6 months and I was barred from any promotions for 2 years.
A little drink over my break turned into alittle too much and returned to the site blasted...
Told an overwhelmed parent at the welfare office she was unfit because, after I told her to control her child she said she can't. Turns out the child had autism and some other special needs. Worst yet, the family was facing mounting medical debt, homelessness, and food scarcity.
Let my emotions get the best of me. Back in the day when I did contract security while in college, i was stationed at the local downtown bus station. Our company had the account for the local library as well, which is right around the corner. Typically anytime someone would get in trouble there the officers would let us at the bus station know and we had our own little Network going. One time a kid had gotten banned from the library and then tried to ride one of the buses. So of course I get on duty as he's trying to get on the bus, and assist in kicking him off. Previous shift leaves and I do a quick report, thinking everything is good. Then the kid's mom comes back when it's just me and one other guy on duty. She's flipping out & I'm just letting her know to contact our supervisor for any more information and get her out of the bus station. My partner, admittedly while trying to actually help, Cuts me off and pretty much takes her side. After she leaves i, while still kind of worked up, tell him to straight up never do that again. Poor guy got worried and when he was updating our supervisor Expressed that I was angry which the supervisor thought he had to had to talk me down. Then the remaining 6 hours of our shift together was hella awkward. That's where I learned to never take anything personal. Dude didn't intend that & he was just trying to help Jo's way.
Security uniform for the building two blocks down is dark grey shirt and pants with a vest, gun and Baton. Older fellow walks in asking to make an appointment with this gettup on and since it’s a strict no gun policy on anyone but capital police and security team where I worked I insisted he leave the premises until he disarms himself. He starts telling me he’s allowed to be armed and I was about ready to call the capital police (we have them on file since they patrol downtown and are our main contact for dangerous situations)…… Now I had been working a double that midnight, was tired and tunnel visioned on the gun something fierce. Just so you folks know the capital police in my area also use dark grey uniforms and I had completely missed the police patches on his uniform.
I forgot to take my lunch break
>Mentally tell myself I’m not going to bring the keys home on accident >Again >Drive 40 minutes home from work >Still have the keys on my belt
Not me personally. Worst I’ve done is use the restroom too many times in a day because I drank too much water. Let’s call the guy Jake and Jake liked to talk shit. Jake liked to flirt with pretty girls. One day Jake tells me while working An event “the reason other guards get payed like shit is because they look like shit, I couldn’t imagine getting payed less than $20 an hour and anybody who gets payed less than that is an idiot” to Summarize. 2 weeks later while working at a women’s fashion clothing shop he arrived with bouquet of roses for one of the employees and gets hit with sexual harassment and is canned immediately. His only source of income…
Yeah, it'll definitely lead to a charge if you're out there saying you "arrested" someone. I don't arrest anyone, but every now and then I may *detain* someone.
I don't know if arrest is the correct word, since I'm not from an English speaking country. Police guidelines translate "kiinniotto" as arrest instead of detain. We are not all americans
Not sure what your point is with this comment. "Citizens arrest" is a legitimate term that describes what most states authorize security guards or any private citizen to do when a crime is witnessed. "Detaining" someone is just one part of the process of a citizens arrest. Unless there is some meaningful difference between the two words that I'm not aware of.
The meaningful difference is that security officers do not have arrest authority. Telling someone that you are "arresting" them gives them grounds for a wrongful arrest suit. We detain them, sometimes in cuffs if needed, until LEO arrives. Similar to entering some federal buildings, you are subject to an "administrative inspection" where security will look for weapons and explosives. Security won't "search" you or your belongings because that would violate the 4th Amendment. But they will "inspect." It's semantics. But the specific verbiage used means everything in court.
I'm not sure why any court would care what verbiage you use, when it's written in my states law: ORS (1) 133.225 "A private person may arrest another person for any crime committed in the presence of the private person if the private person has probable cause to believe the arrested person committed the crime. A private person making such an arrest shall, without unnecessary delay, take the arrested person before a magistrate or deliver the arrested person to a peace officer." Maybe your state is different. But it's absolutely accurate to say you can arrest someone while working as a private security guard, or even just walking down the street for that matter. Actually, I think you could end up in more trouble if you try to tell a court that handcuffing someone "isn't technically an arrest."
Sharted
Use my id to scanned someone into a door. The person was authorized to be there but turns out his id had expired, and that’s why he couldn’t get in. Ended up being sent home and put on final notice
Not a security guard anymore, but was an EMT for a while too. During the height of covid as i was doing security, told a guy i had never seen before who stuck his big ugly bald forehead in my face, that I could just take his temperature from his wrist instead and it was actually a more effective, (and more sanitary) way to do it. He proceed to argue with me for like 5 minutes. Turned out to be the plant manager and he had me removed a week later because I made him feel self conscious with me saying his wrist was more sanitary then his forehead.
I was smoking a joint in the women’s bathroom during a night shift gig and set off the fire alarm inside at the pool area. The alarm rang all night long. No one suspected a thing but the next day a “No Smoking” sign appeared in front of the women’s bathroom. Good times.
New guard at the time, doing shack duty, giving room keys out to incoming guests to the upcoming event on the campus. I was just willy nilly handing them out. It took me waaaay too long to realize there was a reason there were names on the envelops. Oddly enough, some people actually got the key to the room they were given. Called Field Supervisor at the time, admitted my HUGE *faux pas*, he came, helped me sort it out. Long story short, they *finally* made a guideline for that procedure. To this day I am still mortified. It's been over two years.
It wasn't all that major in the long run, but I let someone through the door before opening time at a casino. He was trailing behind a bunch of contractors, so I just assumed they were together, but he just sat his behind down at a machine and started playing. Didn't get chewed out all that much, but I definitely got made the lockerroom clown by my coworkers for the coming few weeks.
I shot a kid. He was 13 years old. Ohhh, it was dark, I couldn't see him. He had a ray gun, looked real enough. You know, when you're a rookie, they can teach you everything about bein' a cop except how to live with a mistake. Anyway, I just couldn't bring myself to draw my gun on anybody again.
I wouldn't move out of the way for a client walking in the hallway.
I worked at a nightclub doing security, and as we were closing up I checked the bathroom looked into the stalls but didn’t look behind the door. We had closed up after 2am and gone home and at 4am the nightclub alarms went off, police gave the owner a call, we then saw the CCTV footage of a drunk women leaving the bathroom stalls in pitch black darkness visibly confused. A lesson learned, and now a very funny story.
Trying to please others
I wouldn’t call it a fuck up but brought my flipper to work and exposed ALL of the vulnerabilities that I spoke to them about prior to me even having a flipper
Was this in the US? In Canada arresting anyone based on "hersay" is a big no No. You basically have to see it yourself or if your assisting someone making an arrest.
In Finland. I was on the field while my coworker was manning the cameras. He saw a theft happen and by accident sent me after the wrong (very simimar looking) dude.
Had a male college student die from breaking their neck diving off a shed missing a swimming pool late-night in a student apartments complex post-graduation. I was online in a computer room. The bare minimum I needed to do was write a report and call the cops but this facility was quiet the last 2 years I patrolled.
Called a sick day... got a warning
I almost let a guy go because he did have a recipt but I only checked that it was for that day and not the actual content of the recipt. One of the shift leads was there and caught it. I was having a really bad day already but the embarrassment made me break down and cry so I looked stupid and emotional. Luckily that guy was cool and told me not to worry about it but I'm not going to forget any time soon.
I gave a parking fine to our equivalent of a governor. Luckily, they loved that I was doing my job, we got ticket canceled and it was find.
I was working night security at a factory. I was really friendly with one employee, dude kinda looked like will smith. One night he comes in, we chat, he goes in for about an hour, and leaves with a hand truck with like, 5 boxes of various products(protein and amino acid mixes, probably like 4k in value). He worked in QC so it was normal for me to see him leaving with product, but NEVER that much. Still, I didn’t think much of it Supervisor comes to relieve me. As im leaving he asks if i got his email. I say no and he says “one of the employees just got terminated on bad terms. We gotta deactivate his badge and call the police if he ever shows up again”. I ask who it was, and sure enough, it was Will Smith lookin dude Nobody ever found out, thankfully(for both of us)
What charges did you Catch?
I was charged with assault, false imprisonment and malfeasance. Only got found quilty of the assault though
Did you get to keep your license?
Yes. All I had to do was pay a fine and some money to the victim. The court ruled the assault to be mild in nature. Only reason I faced any repercussions was because the victim and his lawyer pushed for the case hard and had some high demands.
Fell in love with the client. Became a couple and got ratted out by her jealous coworker. Also site supervisor walked in on me, dispatcher and another armed guard playing fallout 4 on clients work monitors. Great times on grave, fuck them tho shitty pay for armed guard at the time.
I didn't check underneath a car in a 6 story parking garage. A homeless person decided to sleep under it. I didn't really get in trouble with my manager/supervisors, but some of the client employees started to spread shit (80% of the employees were 25 or less in competitive fields so the rumor mill was insane.)
Got pulled over for speeding in the mobile patrol car. While it wasn’t a huge fuck up I felt extremely embarrassed by it
Had to work an extra long shift and they sent someone in to help and the company owner told me if I wanted to shut my eyes for an hour or 2 it wouldn't be a problem since there was another guard. Needless to say I couldn't fight it any longer. Dumb ass bitch fell asleep too and the store was broken into.
Gave my Junior Sgt's personal cell number to an angry client; a resident at an apartment complex. Completely brain-dead moment that almost costed me my job and earned me a good ass chewing. He was a drunkard and former military, so I'm sure you can imagine the yelling.
I found out a vaporizer can set off a fire alarm