December 22^nd 2005:
The Company Christmas Party
After attempting to fire me last month, my multiple superior's will, without question, wonder why I didn't pop in at the yearly company parking lot holiday party. Especially after the director, virtually weeping during our mandatory December meeting, implored us to attend. I thought it was odd that he had to explain to us that our owner, son of the founder (go figure) is, ". . . not arrogant. He is proud. He is proud and he's having fun." Later on, El Presedenté hisself, went on to humbly inform us how he has purchased six (or was it nine?) brand new Lexi (plural of Lexus) in the past few years. Of course this was part of a story demonstrating superior customer service. I think. Not to be confused with another story, heard in earlier years during a previous single annual mandatory meeting, about how he was, ". . . golfing with New York bankers". Oh yes, he is without a doubt proud. And having fun. However, I do not believe too many of those of us in charge of the unbelievably stressful day-to-day operations are having fun. Or proud. I know many officers, for fear someone will mistake them for a security officer, who rip off their uniform before even getting into their eight year old, dirty white Saturn's to drive home. I believe some of them have altered their blouses and had them fitted with velcro so that they can leap out of them even quicker, not unlike a stripper at one of Jenna Jameson's titty bars. Of course, I myself proudly wear my uniform, gold badge, beeper, Leatherman tool, and belly-hanging-over belt, everywhere, as it really impresses the ladies. You don't even want to hear how many times I've been at the grocery store bent down looking at all the sumptuous choices of 10¢ per package Raman noodles, when I hear, "Do you work here?" It is so odd, and probably points to the fact of how screwed up I am, that I actually felt guilty for not attending the party. Let's see, they threaten to fire me about every eighteen months, my work load has increased by almost 50% since February, and I've been told to quit asking for a raise. But yet they go to the expense to host a Christmas, oops, holiday party for 300 employees and their families, 45% of whom won't be with the company by next Christmas (myself included, dear God I pray.) And besides, you become like the people you hang around with and . . . no thanks. Merry Christmas 2005!
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org December 1^st 2005:
Message from God ?
Out of the blue, my manager phoned and requested I visit the corporate office on such and such a day. Since the majority of his workday is spent putting out the fires ignited by my fellow co-workers who are certified security officers and dolts, and because he expends much of the time left trying to remember where he last left his Barbie-sized stapler, this would be a rare meeting. Being a good 'do-bee' (the opposite of a 'don't-bee') I questioned him not. In the meanwhile, like the Don Quixote-type dreamer I sometimes become, I made a list of all the good things that could happen to me at the meeting. One was, that instead of the laughable quarter an hour raise, sometimes awarded to only outstanding officers, I would be getting a whole dollar. Another possibility was that maybe I would be awarded some kind of certificate (that due to endemic company-wide personnel problems) for having worked every paid holiday when asked and ending up working 1,000 of overtime every year for four years with not a single O.T. hour being at my own community? Maybe I was going to be thanked for pocketing only the salary and a scant two of the physical thirty-five days of paid vacation due me over the past four years? Or possibly I was going to rewarded for being fluent in the four computer systems used by my employer and also being familiar enough to step in at any of twelve different gate houses? Or maybe I was going to be thanked in some unenvisioned manner for training so many new guards? Or maybe I was slated to receive an award for being the only patrol guard in this century who actually caught a burglar inside a client's house. Yes, being it was near Christmas, visions of sugar plum fairies were floating through my optimistically vacant head. What awaited me instead, was a threat of being put on 90-day probationary status! Oh yes, from my home PC (since we do not have a company PC or internet connection at my gatehouse) I had commented to our property manager, in what I thought was a man-to-man-email, about a new policy that not only made no sense, visibly degraded the excellent and prompt service my guests and resident's were accustomed to receiving, but actually endangered my physical well-being. Sadly for me, the P.M. forwarded my email to all the members of the board of the H.O.A. Unsmiling, my manager's manager told that many of the men thought my email funny, and that most of the women did not find humor in it. And since the email tongue-in-cheek mentioned my anemic salary, he himself was not amused. Some mention was made of my far beyond the call of duty efforts, none of catching the burglar or giving up my vacation days or the countless burglar alarm leads sent in, however I was told in no uncertain terms, that I would never get a raise and to quit asking. Unsaid went the expectation that I was to keep providing (without additional charge) the exclusive services (which would require two pages of single-spaced-type to codify), donations of personal time and on and on. The rest of the time was taken up with discussing my latest employee (unilaterally hired by my manager) who possesses such poor mental capacity that all I can think of is the brain-scrambled frog we opened up in high school biology class. That, not being sad enough, he could be the reincarnation of Baron von Munchausen. But yet, and this is very, very, sad, the same company that told me I would not be getting a raise, ever, cannot seem to hire a replacement for the Baron. With all this, I swear to God, my manager will honestly wonder why my happy face won't be seen bobbing around in the parking lot crowd at the company's 'Holiday Party' later this month. And what do you imagine my answer will be to my manager's, manager if he again begs me this year to work both the eves and the days of Christmas and New Year's? Sadly, my answer rests more on how badly I will need the income, rather than any display of personal integrity. Now, even God is telling me I gotta get out of here.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org November 11^th 2005:
The Turkey & The Green Hornet
It's closing in on Thanksgiving Dinner again. This will be my fourth as a security officer. And, for at least a third of this day dated November 24th, 2005, I will be not be inside a home, but instead, a house. A house bordered by a pair of motorized, six hundred pound gates and amused by a white, black and yellow striped, hollow, plastic crossarm and its creaking while it goes up and down, up and down, up and down. My second Thanksgiving, circa 2002, after toiling through a barely tolerable single shift, found me declining attendance at a feast of a wealthy friend of the teen Mr.Wonderful III's. I spent it instead, weeping and alone and wishing my wife had not decided on divorce. Preceded by fifty years of not working on Turkey-Day, this one will constitute my fourth 'working' Thanksgiving Holiday. Thanksgiving weekend used to be a time that it was given I would not be working for four days straight. Gawdamn! what am I still doing here? My Microsoft millionaire friend and resident (who tells me he has no friend's in this sometimes insanely acrimonious gated community) claims that I remain here because the 'positives' outweigh the 'negatives'. While in my own tally, considering that there indeed may be positives, they weigh about as much as a cough during a hurricane. I am cocooned by people who have untold wealth and leisure, but yet are unhappy. I am bereft of any wisp of a financial cocoon and am profoundly unhappy. My MS friend claims, since he spent many hours with me at the gatehouse (prior to his current trek to earn his next 100 millions by founding an enterprise conducting futures trading in Saguaro blossoms) imagines I remain at the gate house for the free on-the-clock time the job offers. I told him any free time these days is because I arrive at work an hour early, so that could not be 'it'. Plus, the only reason I need free time while at work, is that I have no personal free time because I am always at work (64 hours in seven days last week) or driving to, or from, or back to, work. Wednesday, I told a maid that maybe I was here because ten feet away is the Arizona desert me and my Crazy Brother Pat explored every summer vacation from school. Three steps away are the cacti, the red cardinals, the lizards, the snakes, the rabbits and somethings we never saw: tarantulas, poisonous rattle and coral snakes, hawks, eagles, coyotes, feather-duster-tailed red foxes and bobcats, wolves and mountain lions. And thirty steps away begin the homes of my residents, who while not equipped with sharpened beaks or needle-tipped talons or three-inch pointed canines or poisonous fangs, are still brimming with venom. A few wish to empty the contents of that swollen and misshapen gland, where their heart used to be, on the lowest of the low, the security officers at their gatehouse. Me, my crew and my company must constantly fend off venomous strikes by a small percentage of our resident's whose lives are so empty they watch us as closely as they would the heart monitor of their newborn granddaughter. I hadn't intended to write about this recently revealed incident, but because it so clearly and concisely exposes the pressures we are put under while receiving net paychecks many Illegal-Aliens would scoff at, I begin. One lady, Mrs. Noseybutt, formerly on the homeowner's security committee, always seemed to be reporting slip-ups by us and any violations of the C.C.&R.'s by residents (who have a life to live and money to spend on it), far from her own address on the 'poor side of town', but yet, still within our community. This same biddy has not one service person listed on her permanent admit list. Not a poolman, landscaper, maid service, window washer, pest control company or the more esoteric providers: nanny, handyman, property manager, inside plant-care person, tutor, interior designer, limo-service, personal assistant, piano tuner or piano polisher, grace her blank Rolodex® card. Indicating to this seasoned security officer, that she belongs out at Anthem Country Club, not in north, North Scottsdale. (Nor does a single member of her family or any friends appear on her list.) Turns out that the other night, our midnight to morning private patrol truck found himself being tailed down our streets, by a car whose headlights were off, even though at the time, our byways were darker than the interior of Hillary Clinton's soul. He eventually negotiated down a cul-de-sac where, risking personally paying the $1,000 vehicle insurance deductible, blocked-in the mysterious vehicle, while he concurrently Nextel-ed a nearby Scottsdale police cruiser. When the officer arrived and questioned the wanna-be Green Hornet character in the black Audi Touring Sedan, it was discovered it was none other than our own Mrs. Noseybutt. She was informed, by 'Scottsdale's Finest', that should she ever be found to be trailing the private security patrol truck, she would be charged with stalking, handcuffed, arrested and sentenced to at least 364 days in Sheriff Joe's Tent-City. And, sadly, as I understand it, she was also removed from the security committee of the H.O.A. Maybe that's why I'm here: for the unbelievable stories I witness.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
September 20^th 2005:
Secure Insects Provide Jobs
For the PD, I'm keeping an eye on a resident who, earlier in my experience, had already proven himself to be a crook. For a spouse, in the middle of a pending divorce, I'm keeping an eye out for the 'interloper.' And, for our federal friends in Maryland, I'm spying on a known felon, possible terrorist, and recently a pilot of a brand new black Bentley automobile. Who says security guardin' isn't exciting? All this and I get paid too? I risk my life for wages that an average employee at a sandwich shop would run from to go to work in the butter-scented atmosphere of a Harkins' movie house? Management wonders why annual turnover is 65% and while there were once seventy applications per week, there are now only ten? Only ten people willing to pay eighty dollars, be investigated by the FBI, the DPS, Equifax, be drug-tested and endure a stone-faced polygrapher asking whether you've ever had sex with a vampire-bat-bitten, rabid, Mexican donkey or rigged a World Series game? The average security officer would lose a battle of wits with an earthworm and moves slower than a three decade old, moss adorned, South American sloth. Although, in my particular situation, we are blessed with a handful of intelligent and diligent (almost always female) officers. The newest O.I.C. (Officer in Charge), after a period of one month to one year, while conscientiously and persistently delivering far more than the job requires, soon discovers that commensurate wage increase requests are met only with the generous offer of Diamondback baseball seats so cheap that they require the rental of medical oxygen; or a pair of Harkins movie tickets, and/or the offer of overtime work and the chance to be abused by a whole new gang of vendors, guests and residents, usually after already being severely pummeled during the previous eight hour shift. It is then that the 'newbie' discerns the corporate-favored attributes of any security company is the ability of its guards to not miss a single day of work, not turn down any overtime and, while burning as few calories as possible (to maintain the body fat of the typical morbidly obese guard), not to get caught asleep. Not to get caught asleep. When I wrote this I was doing the overtime mentioned earlier and substituting on a third shift (that is typically inhabited by officers who actually rode up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt) at another guard house. Door open, 74F degree outside desert air mixing with my 68F degree artificially cooled air, I could hear a pack of coyotes yapping, screeching and howling as visions of the movie "An American Werewolf in London" played back in my head. However, all is not lost on the job front. Understand I was recently chatting with Josh, who works for a large pest control company, and like your Mr.Wonderful, he too is under paid and under appreciated amidst massive personnel turnover and lackadaisical coworker performance. So, thinking outside of the box I have hit on what I believe to be a huge money-maker. Since Josh knows his bug-killing and I know my security guardin' I figure we will set up a company to protect bugs. Protect bugs from what would be certain death: the pest control man. Now why hasn't anyone thought of that before?
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

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