Free at last! Free at last!

I lead this one off with a little bit of heavy philosophy that reflects some of the shit that's led me to this point.

"As a traveler, you're not here to judge, but to experience... it no longer crushes you that some are greater - or lesser - than you are."

- Gene Roddenberry, 1976

Last night was, I hope, my final night working in the security business. It is truly my hope that I can use the flexibility of the cab driver world to counter attack my financial woes and regain my footing in the entertainment world. Basically, get a few bucks together from heavy work periods, pay for classes, network, be ready to push the button on the cab that says "off duty" when those auditions come up. For want of a better word, cab driving is that one thing I believe I can do that will give me that "traveler's flexibility" that I want within this city. Security is most definitely what I would call a "destination profession." You arrive. You advance to another destination and fulfill a role. Repeat the cycle and have people pat you on the back 30 years later for building a career on the backs of other people who are trying to get to the destination you're at by stopping at those other destinations along the way. This leads me to a little something I'd like to call...

An Ode to The Security Business

A little more than a year ago, when I took a job supervising for the folks over at [insert petrochemical company name here], my manager at the time told me, "at my very core, I've always been a very good basic security officer." Now I pretty much took this to mean that he considered himself a mentor to the inexperienced in this business, and he was and still is, but it also led me to wonder just how long does it take before you can actually say that and mean it?

My own security career had been an on and off affair of the last 25 years, me picking up the work when I didn't have anything else to fall back on. I liked it, the work was always simple and unfortunately it was also fairly cheap. You weren't going to get a "homes for heroes" discount on your home loan doing security because 1.) you'd never make enough money to qualify and 2.) no one thinks of the average security officer as a damn "hero" in the same way firefighters, police and corrections officers are viewed. However, the best I can figure about what makes a really great security officer are actually a very small set of skills that have to be executed really well before you can say that you are great at the basics. These are:

1.) Customer service - namely, the whole making people feel like their wants and needs in your place of business are important and deserve addressing in a timely manner. No one likes being treated as if they're interrupting something, especially if it's something that's unimportant-looking, to bring a legitimate concern to the table at your place of business. What that boils down to is simply acting in a manner that expresses and shares interest in the issue with the person(s) seeking help. That's it. Really.

2.) Looking for the unusual so you know what the unusual looks like. Another saying among the people who think they're great basic security officers is, "if you drop me in the desert with a stack of DARs and some water, I'll find a way to secure that desert." In the security profession, you're paid to be a living extension of management's eyes and ears. In fact, you're supposed to use as many of your senses (usually not the sense of taste, for obvious reasons) as possible to look for those things that may cause losses for those people.

3.) Communication. If you can read and write well, plus effectively get ideas from your brain to another, then you will have a long and fruitful career in the security business.

So, why is it that a few great security officers (or people who have these skills) don't just settle in and make the industry great and make great money at it? The problem is two-fold.

A.) The bottom tier of the industry is populated by those making sub-standard wages, and therefore most folks who try security as a profession usually end up treating it like a transitory profession instead of a destination profession.

B.) The good ones either end up getting promoted too quickly or find something else that's more of a challenge than being a front-line security supervisor or manager. Example, I was on the job at [insert petrochemical company name here] for less than three weeks when I was approached to be one of the brand spanking new shift leads. Any profession that you can quit, rejoin, quit again, and rejoin and someone is ready to hand you chevrons and bars coming in the door is one where the revolving door provides opportunity to the qualified, but can also frustrate people who stick out their tenures in without ever knowing that their bosses think they're fuck-ups that they'll never promote.

The other two-pronged problem with security is the fact that it's a consumer-driven industry whereby companies constantly underbid and undercut each other by offering lower man-hour rates to try drumming up business. However, the supposed goal of the security business is one in which they promise "high-quality people" who perform altruistic duties such as walking patrols in the rain and snow so million-dollar a year suits don't have to do it. So basically, millionaire security managers negotiate contracts with millionaires in steel and glass towers to create little $8.50 an hour altruistic minions while they change money from one hand to another. And if you're lucky you put all those skills I mentioned above to work and you rise to middle management with the larger security companies. If not, you're stuck on a post you don't want to work at and you might have to go to another company and try slugging your way up again with only one or two of those skills.

Here's the really deceitful part of the security business is, though. If you're one of those hopeless fuck-ups who can't put any of those skills together, you're not going to be told by your management team (with most companies) that you need to improve your education or other skills to advance. You're just going to get used. You become the pack mule of the business. I've seen guys like this too, who are always line officers or first line supervisors who never advance. You can give guys really simple tasks and they run with them okay and they should be able to show someone else how to do those tasks. And they're also the wise guys who are second guessing the boss because they don't have enough brain cells to rub together to design and implement an entire security system, but they've been "working in security for twenty years."

As a suitable transition, that's why I paid no mind to the loudmouth in my first two days of cab driving classes at Yellow who kept on yammering the fuck on about all his "driving experience." This "experience" also included fun experiences like auto accidents - which I assume I'm going to be in because people are drawn to yellow like moths to flames - and all the shilling and back door deals he was willing to be a part of. I know where my lines are drawn, and I don't need this prick trying to erase them for me. Because, of course, he was also more than willing to share the fact that he had a court date to attend regarding some of those details before the city would issue him his hack license.

Fancy that.

I, on the other hand, contacted the City today and found out my fingerprints and backgrounds had cleared. And while I'm not much of a Bible quoter I remember this passage.

"Know ye the truth young man, and the truth shall set ye free."

Free is good.

The other side of doing things the right way was putting in a two week notice from my security job and making a clean break instead of trying to dovetail the two jobs together. My work schedule at the security job and the classes were overlapping and I was risking life and limb to take the first two classes and screwing up my sleep.

Brother, I'm not 23 anymore. That crap doesn't work like it used to. Basically, I finish classes, take my driver physical and get my city hack license and go get my airport badge and I'm ready to rock by about next Thursday. And, with the first day's lease of 9 bucks, I'm bound to make up any lost financial ground from not working most of that week. It started out as an idea to get a second job to bolster a flagging income during a screwball economy. It may end up being the best thing I've done. If it isn't, I have my fallback plan.

Namely, I finally cave in and give that old security industry what it wants... another manager.

In other news, I saw a film about a guy who was too stuck on his destinations to realize he was on a journey: The Wrestler. It had two things in it I wanted to see, on the surface, anyway.

Marisa Tomei, nekkid... and Mickey Rourke on steroids.

Basically, it spoke to me about my own performing career and some of the disappointments I had because I thought I had "arrived" in certain places. However, with a broader brush, this movie can speak to a lot of people who are stuck in a certain aspect of their lives and it points out the potential hazards of not doing the hard work to change who and what you are when those facets of yourself are hurting you. In fact, a lot of people almost look at this as something of an autobiography for Mickey because of people's perception that he's always been a self-destructive personality. One critic went so far to call the film the "resurrection of Mickey Rourke." Note to the critic... if he fucks it up again, then it's going to be a damn short resurrection in the minds of the talking heads who created it in the first place. Personally, I enjoyed watching him in Sin City a couple years ago and I don't remember anyone from that film saying, "I'm never working with that bastard again." So my guess is that the rumors of Mickey's demise are a little exaggerated and the resurrection is just as contrived.

Of course, that kind of leads me back to this. Namely, that my going into the cab driving business is proof that I can re-make myself. I can change and still give myself what I need to not only survive, but stay flexible enough to contribute to those projects that have a place for a "broken down piece of meat" (a quote from the movie) like me. Since my next class isn't until the day after the Super Bowl (sue me, fuckers, I dare you), I have this little 4-day weekend to kind of re-set myself, get used to sleeping during the night again and get ready for the transformation.

Peace, out...

GM