The coworker I am working with right now is a fellow ex-employee of the lower valley. I was showing him this forum post and he reminded me of something that happened in early 2016.
I had been the site security supervisor of the lower valley I think for around 5 weeks at the time this takes place and I was training my first guard in that capacity.
For the purposes of this post I’m going to call him uhhh. . .uhhh. . .Eldon. . .because that’s the first word I saw on my desk.
Anyway
I started training Eldon who was actually there to fill the guard slot that I had vacated, we ended up having a lot of problems with this guy and I would end up terminating his contract with the valley only 2 weeks later but we’ll get to that.
I had mentioned in my last forum post about the valley, the property had some rules set forth by the state of Hawaii with the goal of protecting the native Hawaiian ducks that resided there permanently as well as the native Hawaiian owls that visited occasionally. Part of the rules set by the State of Hawaii stipulated that hunting was strictly forbidden onsite, this was also against the rules of the property and the rules of Securitas itself where employees were involved.
So
State
Property
Company
All 3 of them say no to hunting right? Ok.
I use the first half of the first training day to go over the rules and regulations for the site to include anything put forward by the state, city, company, client and myself, we then go on our first property patrol.
30 seconds in he sees the stream that runs through the property.
Eldon: Boss?
Me: Hmm?
Eldon: We can fish, boss?
Me: Hmm? No, no, fishing is included in the activities that we can’t do. Something to do with the ducks and the ecosystem.
Eldon: Oh, ok, ok, ok, ok.
We drive maybe for 3 more minutes before encountering a number of chickens dotted about one of the roads just chilling.
Eldon: Oh! Oh! Oh! Hey boss, boss, we can catch the chicken?
Me: What? No, no we. . .we leave the chickens alone. They help us with rodent control and also keep the cats out of our tenant areas. The rules I told you about earlier apply to everything on this property whether it is farmyard or not, alright?
Eldon: Oh. . .ok, thanks boss.
As we take the bend into the next section of the site we encounter some of the ducks who are taking a break from fighting the motion of the stream and instead lounging in a massive puddle left in a dip off to the side of the road from a recent storm.
Eldon: Boss, we can catch the duck? Not for food but for a pet?
Me: No. . .El. . .those are the protected ducks, you can’t touch the wildlife here at all. Do we need to go back to the office and go over the SOP’s again man? It’s ok if we do, this is the first day of training, this property is kind of a lot. I need you to tell me if things aren’t making sense so I can ensure that we train you correctly so you don’t get hurt out here.
Eldon: Oh! no no no no no, I understand boss, I understand.
As we reach the end of that half of the site and turn around to double back we encounter a pack of wild pigs.
Eldon: BOSS BOSS BOSS! We can hunt the pig? We can hunt the pig? I give you meat?
Me: NO! Mate, you are here to work, that’s it. You aren’t even allowed to carry weapons that would allow you to hunt.
Eldon: No, no, I come after work.
Me: Eldon, as I explained earlier, you can’t be here when you aren’t working. Once your shift is over you are to vacate the property until your next scheduled shift.
Eldon: Oh. . .
Needless to say we went straight back to my office and went over the SOPS and rules and regulations again. This time I quizzed him at the end and he demonstrated an understanding.
As we left my office he looked at the chain link fence nearby which was overgrown with vines.
Eldon: Boss?
Me: Yeah?
Eldon: I harvest the leaf?
Me: The what?
Eldon: The leaf?
He walks over to the fence
Eldon: Really good in soup, this one too.
He shows me a small. . .pepper looking thing growing on the vines.
Me: Ok THAT you can take, I didn’t know it was edible but you can have it, yes.
There were no further issues throughout his training but once he became a guard he became a problem.
He started to claim that his blood pressure was too high and that he had to go home early, which I allowed a few times, but then I asked him for a doctors note. He provided a generic “Hey we saw your guy at Pali Momi on this date” note and came back to work.
A week later he started trying to convince the other guards that he needed to go home, showing them a blood pressure monitor as proof.
The guard on duty was wary and touched base with her partner who asked for the numbers on the blood pressure monitor over the phone.
She told him that it was 95.
Cisco: 95 over what?
Calories (literally using random words off my desk): What?
Cisco: 95 over what?
Calories: It’s just 95.
Cisco: Then that isn’t a blood pressure reader, blood pressure is a numerator and a denominator. That sounds like a heartrate monitor.
This incident escalated into something far creepier.
Calories was a female guard, very small petite frame that barely fit in our smallest company uniform available. Blonde, blue eyes, my personal friend, classmate and someone I recruited to the company myself. We were 23 at the time and Eldon was about 48.
Eldon started insisting that Calories drove him home and he would not back down from it. He was outright adamant that she take him back to his house in god knows where, even when Cisco offered to take him home instead.
Luckily I had an assistant supervisor at the time and he was just arriving as this happened, we’ll call him Goggles.
Goggles told Eldon he would take him home if he was that worried, Goggles wasn’t even supposed to be there, he was just checking on the crew since Eldon, Cisco and Calories were all somewhat new.
Eldon refused, insisting that Calories drove him home.
Goggles didnt’ like that and I believe he actually ejected him from the site and took over his shift, reporting the incident to me and in turn HR.
HR gave him a slap on the wrist and sent him back, we accepted him but made sure he and Calories were on opposite ends of the schedule.
A week later Eldon started calling in sick literally every single day, saying that he would be in for sure the next day only to call out again an hour prior to his shift.
This forced me to cycle our scheduling over and over and over and over again and pissed off our client as well.
As a supervisor I didn’t have a say over the hiring and firing for the site but I sent my security company side boss an email stating that Eldon was no longer welcome at the site.
The email didn’t go over well and we got into an argument about staffing and me overstepping my boundaries.
When the property manager got wind of it he sent his own email stating in no uncertain terms that he stood behind my previous email and that Eldon was no longer welcome on the site, thus ending his employment.
I don’t know how I worked for that company for so long. . .