Working for the Weekend

I've rejoined the ranks of the gainfully employed. I'm not exactly in my dream job, but it'll hold body and soul together.

I'm working for Command Security, which is a security guard provider. Due to my education and military background, I'm not the kind of guard that stands in a bank to deter robbers.

Rather, I'm the kind of guard that sits in a multinational bank's security headquarters. I'm a "console operator" which means I have a computer and a telephone with a disturbing number of incoming lines. When a security alarm is tripped at any of this bank's hundreds of North American branches or ATMs, the phone rings and it shows up on my computer. I then check to see if other alarms are activating at that location and remotely view the location's cameras. If something untoward seems to be occurring, I can call the local fuzz. I've been doing it for two weeks so far and the only thing that's legitimately tripped multiple alarms is a pair of cats that got locked into a branch overnight. We figure they snuck in the doors with a customer and hid out from the staff. Either that or a staff member brought them to work and they got loose.

While that work's full-time for now, Command Security may mix-and-match my 40 hours per week with work at the local airport. I'd be manning the service vehicle gate. Which is to say, when the Cinnabon in the airport concourse needs a resupply of that white slime that they claim is frosting, a delivery truck has to pull up to an airport loading dock. My job will to be to ensure that the truck is loading with disgusting white slime and not with explosives, terrorists, or thieves. The latter is the biggest concern, as stuff worth shipping by air is almost always very valuable, and there have been some multimillion-dollar airport heists in the past.

I haven't started that yet because we're waiting on the TSA to finish my background checks. (The bank checked me too, but being a business they were a lot faster about it. They're probably more thorough too.) For the TSA security check I had to fill out a long and hilarious form, upon which I averred that I had not been convicted of the following crimes:

• Treason
• Sedition
• Murder committed on an aircraft or at an airport
  
• False construction of an aircraft

There were dozens of others, but those were the funny ones. I looked it up, and the most recent American convictions for treason were for offenses committed during WW2. There were six convicted, and the last one died in 2006.

I don't think sedition has been a crime since the repeal of the Sedition Act (of 1918) in 1920.

Laughing, I asked my boss about the third one. He confirmed that you can work in an airport with a murder conviction, as long as the crime was committed in a non-airport related context. That's reassuring.

As to the final one I listed, I have no idea what that even is, although I can confirm I have never been convicted of doing whatever it is. My best guess is the construction of an aircraft that does not have a FAA certification. Or, possibly, doing work on an aircraft without the proper licenses. A lot of my Marine buddies got their Airframes & Powerplants licenses when they got out, allowing them to do the same kind of work that they had been doing while in the Corps.

So anyway, good times. CSC is taking its time with direct deposit, so I got the first paycheck in paper. How old-fashioned!

Posted by: Boviate at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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