Whats more likely to get a guard fired: doing their job or not doing their job?

[Squid]

I my exp, both myself but mostly others, I'd say its running about 2 to 1 in favor of "doing your job will get you fired".

I've never actually been fired, but I have been taken off a couple of posts after Doing My Job, and had some angry clients, etc.

One example: Our 'site supervisor' seemed to be HS buddies with guys who should've had cars towed like months ago from the complex. He goes on short vacation and I tow the cars, after triple checking with everyone. Then (supposedly) the owner is making death threats against "whoever towed my cars" so they reassign me.

On the other hand, we've got one guy famous for not doing rounds, getting caught watching **** in his car, etc but he seems Teflon coated.

[Consolewatcher]

I've said it before, but part of the problem is that many security supervisors/managers come from a law enforcement/military/civil service background, wherw if you follow policy you'll (usually) be ok no matter who it effects/annoys. Compare this to many security positions, where if the wrong person doesn't like you , you can be kicked off the site or fired. My analogy that I use with former law enforcment is "imagine if most of the people who said they'd "have your badge" probably could."

As a result, it's a constant balancing act between doing your job properly and making exceptions as responsibly as you can.

[SoCalGuard]

I have seen this many times. It is important to remember that public agencies serve the public, here most private security agencies serve only the client. Many clients may have rules they don't want enforced, and that means the client service companies (security) should do what the client wants. There are exceptions to this however, some contracts with public agencies have written in them for the security agency to "enforce violations of public law."

[Ingio Montoya]

Compare this to many security positions, where if the wrong person doesn't like you , you can be kicked off the site or fired.

I think this is what it comes down to. It really doesn't matter how well how you follow policy and procedure if the client doesn't like you, you're gone.


I said it in my rules for life thread but RULE NUMBER ONE is Client Employees Are NOT Your Friend. NEVER forget this.

I worked at a place where I made a point of saying hello to one employee every day. I'd ask questions about her baby, I remembered his allergies. I had a rough idea of his age and teething status and his name. All customer service stuff. I got transferred off that site and had to go back six months later and ran into her. So I started out "How's Logan? Did he ever get used to oatmeal? YADA YADA YADA" so I talked to her for 5 minutes or so and she all of a sudden stopped and said "OMG I just realized you don't work here anymore, do you?"

It doesn't matter how long you're there they will always be "US" and you will always be a very replaceable "THEM"

[Death]

I follow policy to the letter, and I'm willing to go beyond...way, way beyond and I have not been fired. Take that for what you will.

[SecTrainer]

Since "not doing your job" would obviously include failure to report for work, tardiness, unprofessional appearance/demeanor, sleeping on the job and not hitting your patrol stations on schedule, I'd say a lot more people are fired for not doing their job than for doing it. Let's not set up an equivalency where people fear they're at equal risk of termination for doing their job properly as they are for being a slacker, because as a rule that simply is not the case.

It's true that a client can request a contractor not to post a particular individual on their site, but it's pretty rare for the reason to be "because they do their job." It's more likely that they're either not doing their job, or there's something about the way they do the job that causes the problem.

Yes, it certainly happens that the client has no objective reason - they just take a dislike to an officer - but usually there's a reason.

And most contractors won't give a client unlimited carte blanche to request removals willy-nilly without some reason. "Removal rights" of the client are usually spelled out as a term of the contract, and if written properly will specify the reasons for which removal can be requested.

Otherwise, at some point, the client is rendering the contract impossible to perform, and that in turn gives the contractor a legal defense against breach if they decide to simply repudiate the contract.


If you contract with a security service to provide services and then start out capriciously rejecting members of the contract staff without cause, at some point the service can simply walk away from the contract - and would very likely sue you for the resulting loss of revenue for the remainder of the contract - because you (the client) made it impossible for the service to be rendered, and that meant the service couldn't use those resources for other business. It's no different than if you contracted with a cleaning service and then refused to allow them to plug their vacuum cleaners into any outlets. Impossibility of performance renders a contract unenforceable.

[PhantomX0990]

I have seen a guard removed because they 'didn't smile enough'. I have also had a guard removed because they were too friendly.

So, imo, it's 50/50.

[Squid]

I have seen a guard removed because they 'didn't smile enough'. I have also had a guard removed because they were too friendly.

So, imo, it's 50/50.

Then again, if its a Position Of Trust where there might not be a good way of verifying if your guard is honest (not just employee theft, but stuff like "is he tipping-off his criminal buddies?"), more often than not you wont see an employer giving the real reason for a firing, and they will fire based on Their Gut, which is likely fallible.

[copelandamuffy]

I have seen a guard removed because they 'didn't smile enough'. I have also had a guard removed because they were too friendly.

So, imo, it's 50/50.

The problem with the guard who they removed 'didn't smile enough', you may want to propose this question to the client, who you gonna replace
him with? Maybe Jack was not Mr. Smiley, but he was darn good at access control, patrols, observant.

Peter whom replaces Jack is all Mr Smiles, but would permit anyone to walk past the front access desk. There could be a dead body on the
fifth floor when Peter does his patrols, but his mind is somewhere else.

I have worked long enough to hear some client, "We are kicking out Securitas, and bringing in U.S. Security Associates", What the client in reality is doing is changing one security shirt with another. Basically same guards
same ops, manager, same Branch Manager, just the names have changed, and a different style uniform

[SecTrainer]

I have seen a guard removed because they 'didn't smile enough'. I have also had a guard removed because they were too friendly.

So, imo, it's 50/50.

I'm sure you're putting both situations a little more simplistically than what really lay behind those removals. In one case, I imagine there was a bad attitude, discourtesy, etc - not just an "insufficient quota of smiles", And in the other case, "too friendly" can mean a lot of things from chatting up the opposite sex on site, making inappropriate approaches, spending too much time "visiting" while ignoring duties - and even questions about suspicious relationships such as collusion etc.

In any case, one swallow doesn't a summer make, and I doubt you've seen enough such examples of capricious removals to rationally conclude that it's "50-50". You'd need a healthy sample base, analyzed by appropriate statistical methods, in order to actually support such conclusions. This is all just anecdotal, and as such it's unreliable to draw conclusions.

The vast majority of clients have fairly low expectations of contract services, unfortunately. They're usually happy if guards show up reliably, are presentable in their appearance, understand and perorm their assigned duties efficiently, and create as little "sturm und drang" (storm and stress) as possible. The vast majority of clients don't go around removing officers without cause, and certainly not "for doing their job", if it's being done properly.

[psycosteve]

I was doing security at a think tank in DC that dealt with some pretty high ranking military members. I was doing front desk work mostly and for the most part was pretty easy. Due to the political nature of DC most of the higher ranking members of the military were not to be listed on any post orders and had to be either escorted by people who were cleared to do so or had to be verified and signed in. I had a couple of guidelines I had to follow one was no press under any circumstances, no unauthorized electronic devices and a no weapons policy. Everything was so secret squirrel there that it would drive most normal people crazy. I get walking in with a bunch of High ranking Army Generals in a 3 piece gray suit retired Col North. I politely denied him access stating the post rule about press. He was actually cool about it and asked if I could call for verification which I did. I get the hold everyone down in the lobby and the client was going to come on down to check everyone out. Client gets out of the elevator authorizes everyone in . I get him to sigh the authorization log and I think that OK I did a good job. Next day I am reassigned to another site for violating the post rules or some other excuse. Great gig while it lasted but it is what it is.

[Ingio Montoya]

I have seen a guard removed because they 'didn't smile enough'. I have also had a guard removed because they were too friendly.

So, imo, it's 50/50.

We had a guard removed from a contract because the client said his appearance was "unsightly".

The guy had been there for 17 years, did his job correctly, showed up on time and kept his uniform neat. The client didn't like his looks because he was fat. This particular client apparently removed three guards for the same reason.

[Ingio Montoya]

So regardless of Sec Trainer playing devil's advocate we all know that there is an element of "piss off the wrong person and you're gone no matter how well you do your job" in contract security.

One night I was walking the grounds of a site I was assigned to and observed the manager smoking a joint in his car after his shift. As far as I was concerned it was completely outside the scope of my duties and I didn't even acknowledge that I'd seen him.

The next morning I got a call from the office that I had been removed from the site because the same guy said I "just wasn't working out".

When I worked the utilities contract we were required to enforce the company's access control policies against the company's employees and they didn't like it. Where ever they put you, you knew it was just a matter of time before you told the wrong person that you couldn't let their wife have unescorted access to the power plant to pick them up (But all the other guards let her come get me) or made the wrong manager show you their company ID and you were gone. The only reason I lasted 6 years on one site is because no one ever went there.

I've said it before but it's true and I DARE you to tell me I'm wrong. If you have a beef with a systems engineer who makes a third of a mil. a year or even an admin assistant (who is probably RELATED to one of the systems engineers) who started out at 22.50 an hour and has been there for 15 years both of whom the company has invested thousands to train and a 15 dollar hour security guard whose absence most of the client employees literally WILL NOT NOTICE, who do you think is going to go? Regardless of right or wrong.


Where I'm at now I'm only there to physically control the patients if needed. I really don't have to interact with employees much at all and I try to keep it that way.

I try to be helpful to the point of getting the patients water or food or a blanket instead of making the hospital employees take time to do it and they do appreciate it.

Beyond that I do everything I can to keep a low profile. I'm courteous and polite to everyone I speak to (even when they're treating me like stupid furniture) but I keep my distance. I don't start non business conversations with them. If they're having a conversation right in front of me I don't interject myself into it.

I figure the less people notice you're even there the less likely you are to annoy the wrong person.

That said, everywhere you go there will be people who flat out don't like you no matter what you do. People like that I make a point of staying away from. I simply don't speak unless spoken to unless my duties require it. I stay out of the part of the building they're in if I can. I just avoid them.

[Condo Guard]

I would imagine it is the same in a lot of other industries - unless you are union or a public employee, employment is "at will." Ol' Condo ain't working at the condos no more because I made that bad mistake if misreading the top boss - he acted easy going & mature, but was very thin skinned and felt that anyone who disagreed with him on anything "wasn't a team player." Do I miss my pay and rank? Sure. But what's funny is that all the stuff I predicted would go south in the reoganization of the department pretty much happened. I don't miss the drama, that's for sure.

I think IM has it - do the job, be cool, but stay detached, and know you're expendable. And keep your skills up for the next gig. I tried to stay out of the office politics, I had a good run, but in the end sometimes you roll snake eyes. It isn't fair, but that's life.

- And you're right, a week after you're gone, no one will remember your name. So do a good job for YOU, because in the end that's who you really answer to.

[PhantomX0990]

I'm sure you're putting both situations a little more simplistically than what really lay behind those removals. In one case, I imagine there was a bad attitude, discourtesy, etc - not just an "insufficient quota of smiles", And in the other case, "too friendly" can mean a lot of things from chatting up the opposite sex on site, making inappropriate approaches, spending too much time "visiting" while ignoring duties - and even questions about suspicious relationships such as collusion etc.

In any case, one swallow doesn't a summer make, and I doubt you've seen enough such examples of capricious removals to rationally conclude that it's "50-50". You'd need a healthy sample base, analyzed by appropriate statistical methods, in order to actually support such conclusions. This is all just anecdotal, and as such it's unreliable to draw conclusions.

The vast majority of clients have fairly low expectations of contract services, unfortunately. They're usually happy if guards show up reliably, are presentable in their appearance, understand and perorm their assigned duties efficiently, and create as little "sturm und drang" (storm and stress) as possible. The vast majority of clients don't go around removing officers without cause, and certainly not "for doing their job", if it's being done properly.

Honestly, I was just being sarcastic on the 50/50. Was not being serious at all.