He’s got a point, and a darned good one. The people in charge seldom seem to think about proper security. Their usual thinking seems to go: “this is important, it should be protected., so get some security guards!” Then they fail to consider what purpose those security guards should serve, other than annoying the people legitimately using the thing that’s being “protected.”

When I worked at the Post Office, we had to deal with security guards too. They were a joke… they knew it, we knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which just made them angry and more prone to hassling employees trying to come into the building to work. Which was their only job. Their office was at the employee entrance, and I never saw any of them stir from it regardless of the time of day, so they never saw anyone but us.

That makes sense, because management was afraid of the employees. And for good reason… the PO had a policy of hiring military veterans, who were (rarely, but more often than you might think) “unstable,” and were trained in the use of weapons. And due to their military backgrounds, the ones that made management tended to treat their subordinates like a drill sergeant with military recruits — loud, abusive, intolerant of human frailties, and damned certain that even if they were wrong, you had to do what they said or you would be punished. That didn’t go over well with civilians, and even other former military people tended to resent it.

Given a culture like that, it’s no surprise that some people succumbed to stress and “went postal.”

The thing is, the security guards were Postal employees too, and management didn’t trust them any further than the rest of us: although they were each required to carry a gun while on duty, they weren’t allowed to have bullets. The guns were there purely for show. And since we (the employees) knew that they didn’t have any bullets, and they never dealt with anyone else, the guns completely failed to intimidate anyone. As did the inevitably-overweight people wielding them, despite the fact that they insisted on poking through your belongings and hassling you whenever they got bored.

Did they make the Post Office any safer? If one of my co-workers had snapped and brought in a gun, they’d have just been the first victims. Which might have forced him to reload a bit sooner and given the rest of us more time to get away, but that’s about it. And having them there simply irritated the employees further, increasing the chances of just that happening.

The moral of the story is, always think carefully before you decide to put security guards on something. Some things won’t be any safer at best, and just might be less secure with them around.

Wow. The Happy Meal is so good that even mold will turn up its nose at it. Do we really eat this stuff? And pay for the “privilege”?

If you have doubts that this could be real, put them to rest — it’s got a big brother that’s approaching puberty. Or has already hit it, since it would be fourteen this year.

The Egyptian pharaohs achieved a kind of immortality with the pyramids. Greek scientists managed it with writing. Apparently our contribution to the ages will be made with two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun.

(Did I just date myself? I don’t think I’ve heard that jingle since the seventies. Ah, no, it seems they did revive it relatively recently, so I’m safe. 😉 )