Guarded

They're installing a new badge-reader system at work, which will, theoretically, eventually work with the new badges we were issued a few months ago. So far it doesn't, so today they just turned off the alarm and propped all the doors open.

But we're safe! Because, remember, we have that extra security guard posted at the end of our hallway.

Of course this extra guard was posted there several months ago, shortly after a somewhat deranged older employee, who had been stalking my cube neighbor A., got fired.

The guard is still there, though A. has been gone about a month now. But there were always two or three days a month when the guard's station would be empty. We never could figure out if there was a pattern to this. But this morning, Robbie and I were speculating that, long-term employees being largely creatures of habit, perhaps the former stalker is organized enough to call in and indicate whether he's planning to be a threat each day.

It's been going on for quite a while, so I imagine the conversations are professionally jovial. "Hey Rick, how's things? Thinking about coming in with an Uzi today?" "Nah, it's gorgeous out today, nice weather to enjoy a few cold ones out by the lake." "Well, have a great one, talk to you tomorrow!"

Turnover is pretty high for the extra security guard position. These people - hourly contract employees - must get incredibly bored just sitting there in one spot, day in and day out, on perpetual watch for someone who almost certainly will never come in, not that they'd have a chance in hell of recognizing him if he did. So there's a different guard about every other month. The last one was a woman, but the new one today is a guy.

He caught my eye pointedly as I walked past on the way to my desk this afternoon. "Well, hello there," he said, "how are you today?"

I smiled and nodded and looked away and mumbled something, but he kept his eyes hard on me, and I could feel them sticking to my backside all the way down the hall.

So today I got sexually harrassed by a security guard posted to protect a woman who's no longer there from a stalker who most likely was never much of a threat to begin with.

Your tax dollars at work!