“Good morning, Mr. Carter. All the officers are at their posts. Officer Carcerino is currently on roving patrol, and there have been no incidents.” I would then show him the logbook. With that and a parting “Very well; good night, Sergeant Saunders,” Mr. Carter would turn around and be out the front doors and presumably back to bed. It all took no longer than five minutes.
The first time Carter pulled one of these surprise visits, I was just lucky to have been at my desk and actually taking a report from Officer Higgins, who had just come back from a roving patrol. It looked good—perfect, in fact.
The unannounced visits might very well have soothed Mr. Carter’s apprehension and given him something to report to his superiors, but they were, by degrees, more and more distressing to Sergeant Saunders.
Knowing there were one or two guards who liked to nap at their posts now and then wasn’t comforting, and if by chance Mr. Carter chose to make the rounds of the guard stations in the complex, that would certainly be a problem. The fact that he hadn’t up till then lulled me somewhat into contentedness. Could it be, after all, that Mr. Carter didn’t want to know about a sleeping security guard any more than I did? Or could it be that he was giving me fair warning? Of course it turned out he was giving me fair warning.
Much like the roving guard, one of my duties was to wander the complex, visiting the various stationary posts, checking on the security officers under my charge, checking the cafeteria, and strolling through data processing looking for unlocked doors.
Finding an officer asleep on these patrols, I would sometimes wake him up, or, hearing my approach, he might wake up on his own, but in any case, the officers knew that I knew they were sleeping. They also knew that I was unwilling to admonish them, or chose not to, let alone take any disciplinary action.
Despite my adding unlocked doors to my morning reports, Mr. Carter continued to suspect my officers of sleeping, as he’d say to me daily, “Now, you’re sure nobody is sleeping on post, Sergeant? We can’t have anyone sleeping on post.”
Finally, during one morning briefing, I was advised that he would be making an inspection during which the both of us would be making the rounds of all the stationary posts. Nice to know.
I immediately informed my staff of officers that the security manager would be making special surprise inspections and that they should be awake (if not alert) at all times for a while.
Sure enough, it was only a couple of days later that Mr. Carter came striding through the front doors at three in the morning.
“Good morning, Sergeant Saunders. Anything to report?”
“Good morning, Mr. Carter. Nothing to report. All posts are manned, and Officer Carcerino is on roving patrol.”
“Good. Have you made the rounds yet this morning?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. Sergeant Saunders, let’s make the rounds and check on all the stationary posts.”
“You mean together, Mr. Carter?
“Yes, together, Sergeant.”
I was thinking, uh oh. I said, “OK.”
I hoped for the best, but knowing my officers, I expected the worst as we left on patrol, figuring Carter would be firing some people that night.
Our first stop was shipping and receiving, manned by Officer Jackson, who was a likeable, very soft-spoken Illinois State student from Chicago. When he was awake, he enjoyed describing his studies and home life.
But Officer Jackson was the sleepiest of officers, so it wasn’t a question of if Officer Jackson would be asleep but rather how deep a sleep. With luck and a little noise from me, he might hear us coming.
When approaching a stationary guard post, I’d usually jingle my keys, walk heavily, or slam doors in an attempt to wake or warn the guard on duty that I, or someone, was in the vicinity. Often the officer on duty would hear me approaching his post and wake up.
As Mr. Carter and I were making our way down the hallway toward shipping and receiving, I did my best to be as noisy as possible without being too blatant about it, but much to my dismay, as we turned the corner at the loading dock, there was Officer Jackson, book open, pen in hand, but sound asleep at his desk.
Mr. Carter, noting the sleeping Officer Jackson, seemed almost relieved by this discovery and radiated an instant aura of self-satisfaction. It appeared his three o’clock trip to headquarters had indeed been worthwhile. Now, finally, there would be something to report to upper management. We were doing something all right, but it was only catching ourselves not doing our job. Not much for Sergeant Saunders to celebrate here.
There was plenty to eulogize, though, because this was the occasion of the end of the age of innocence for the old Sarge, and in just those few seconds, I knew it.
The gentle comfort of irresponsibility had begun its inexorable erosion, to be methodically replaced, however slowly, by the encumbrance of maturity. I was downcast but with a little anger mixed in as well. I hadn’t asked to be a supervisor, and I wasn’t working graveyard shift to actually do anything anyway.
Security guards who work graveyard shift at $2.10 an hour at more or less deserted corporate headquarters don’t expect to do much of anything. After all, that’s why they took the job. That’s why I took the job. Yet now, here I was, faced with the knowledge that I would be expected to supervise in some way, possibly even wielding authority. I hoped that whatever the discipline meted out to Officer Jackson was to be, it would be done by Mr. Carter in the here and now. It wasn’t to be.
Mr. Carter woke Officer Jackson all right, so at least I didn’t have to do that. But rather than admonishing Officer Jackson, or Sergeant Saunders, for that matter, he chose to walk off with me in tow, simply saying to me, “Let’s go.”
We hadn’t gone far when Mr. Carter turned to me, asking, “Did you know Officer Jackson was sleeping at his post?”
Thinking quickly, I said, “You mean now?”
“I mean all the time. Is Jackson sleeping all the time?”
“Not when I’m around he isn’t,” I replied. Now this was marginally true, because, as I said, I tried to make a lot of noise so nobody was asleep by the time I reached his post.
“OK, you’re going to have to fire Jackson for sleeping on post.”
“I am?”
“Yes, of course. We can’t have officers sleeping at their posts, can we?”
“I guess not, but Jackson’s a good guy, Mr. Carter. A good security officer.”
“No, he’s not. You’re going to have to fire Officer Jackson.”
“Right now? No warning or anything?”
“Yes, now. We have to take security seriously.”
I doubt I could have appeared as dejected as I felt, and as I stood there quietly, in the next few seconds an internal argument ensued. Do I fire Officer Jackson? I had been allowing him to sleep at his post for months. How can I fire him now? This was against my principles, such as they were, of being understanding of the struggling student just trying to get by.
What about Jackson’s apartment and food and tuition? Then it hit me. Wait a minute—what about my apartment and my food? Suddenly it became clear that I would have to go back to the shipping and receiving loading dock and fire Jackson.
Having made my decision, I slowly shuffled my way back to the loading dock where, incredibly, Jackson was again asleep. I thought, Just great—now I have to wake him up and then fire him. So that’s what I did.
“Listen, Officer Jackson, sorry, but Mr. Carter says I have to let you go.”
“Let me go. I’m fired?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“But I have tuition and bills.”
Like that was what I needed to hear. I just said, “I know. Mr. Carter said I have to let you go.”