r/securityguards • u/Juany118 • 11d ago
Interesting meeting
Well I have been site Lead (and armed officer) for a security team at a public school since October. The company has less than 500 employees and primarily handles schools and houses of worship but obviously has some commercial accounts to keep money rolling in when school is out for the summer. Well last week the COO scheduled a Microsoft Teams meeting for this afternoon to save on travel time from my school to the home office. I sign in and there is the COO, CEO and Executive Director. Welp, once the school year ends in June I am going to be an Ops Manager, over school contracts primarily as it's my speciality, who is going to be getting CPP, PSP and PMP certifications on the company dime. I had 27 years in law enforcement before I joined the company, much of it as a liaison with a school district so I demonstrates that I know how to talk to clients, and that was apparently added into the metrics but still I am hoping that it doesn't cause friction with other site Leads who have been with the company longer. In hindsight this really wasn't an interview, it was more of a "We are looking for 2 ops managers and a bunch of field supervisors which do you want?"
Anyone ever have an issue making a jump like this from site lead straight to Ops? Is the friction I am concerned about a real thing? I have noticed some people on the Reddit here complaining about what they see as favoritism towards former LEOs and Veterans but don't know how prevalent that really is.
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u/TheRealChuckle 11d ago
I would go over the new employment contract in great detail and make sure it says what I actually agreed to. You don't want to be in a position where they verbally tell you what you want to hear and then, when you don't get out of bed at 2am to answer the phone for some inane question that could have waited until your shift, they come down on you about how your contract says 24/7, etc.
As for the negative perception of ex LEO/military. That seems to come mainly from their attitude, and it's a minority of them.
There's no need to treat most sites like a boot camp or that the enemy could attack at any moment.
I've only had one bad experience with a mobile supervisor who was ex military. My post was a solo construction gate, real good easy gig. This mobile guy got assigned my site and was just an asshat. He'd show up and give me shit because my shirt was dirty, dude it's a fucking construction site, ya my shirt is dusty. He gave me shit for reading a book, buddy, I'm here for 12 hours and after 1500 the site is shut down, I'm sitting behind a locked gate, I'm only here after site close in case a different crew needs tunnel access.
What this meathead didn't take the time to learn was that the client loved me since I did my job very well. I was also a go to problem solver for the account manager.
The client saw him yelling at me one day and kicked him off the site, then called the account manager and bitched him out.
Never saw that mobile guy again.
Don't be like that and your LEO background won't be an issue. Sites need to be run properly and guards need to do their jobs, but context is important.