Are security officers really the issue?

o.k. so I was on a social website for professionals, in there I was looking at a site where they were talking about the lack of professionalism of security guards. One of the big questions was whether this lack extended all the way throughout the industry or if it was only limited to certain areas. Now I have a bit of experience in this area and I got to thinking, the real problem is that you expect them to act professional, but you refuse to treat them like they were professionals. You call them names, you pay them poor wages, you refuse to give them the training or tools they need to do their job, you work them like you would work no other employee and then you demand them to be professional as well. That is why a lot of people who MIGHT have been great assets who have considered being in the industry aren’t. These things are why there is a high turnover rate and this is why you can only get people to work for you that are less than the best or at least less motivated than most. Think about it! What kind of conditions do the security officers, that you know, work in? I know of one job near me where the security officer sits in a “Room” up to 12 hours a day. The room is little more than a closet measuring about 6 feet by 4 feet. The walls are all painted a dirty yellow and the only items in there are a radio clock, a grey institutional desk and a camera monitor that is hooked to cameras that do not actually work. The standards of operation dictate when to turn the monitor on and off, and even though the monitor has NO use whatsoever the officer is still expected to follow those procedures. The officer is tasked with preventing any trespassers but at the same time the company insists that certain doors to the outside not only must remain unlocked but they have to be propped open to allow air flow through the building to keep people from suffering heatstroke or worse. And ALL those doors are outside of the view of the officer in his room. Sometimes the officer is required to maintain the premises and the machinery of the business when other employees are unavailable basically then doing the job of those other employees AND his own job simultaneously while still getting paid little more than minimum wage. Right down the hall from his room is a bulletin board where the company lists the starting wages and positions that are open in the company. Every wage on that list is higher than anything the officer can look forward to but because he is contracted with the business and not a direct employee he is ineligible for any of those positions. So he is stuck in a job that pays 10 cents over minimum wage even though he has already proven that he CAN do any of the jobs at the business, because he DOES do ALL of the jobs, simultaneously, whenever the regulars are gone.) All of that and yet when the business cannot seem to keep any regular officers on the post they complain that “no one wants to earn their paychecks anymore.” I kid you not this was actually said to me one day as someone in the business offices was complaining about the lack of decent help. I told her to consider all the information I just presented here but she refused to hear it. There is no respect for the officers there, only spite. So maybe now I can ask you, if those are the conditions that a security officer faces, What do you think the answer is to the question about the lack of professionalism of security guards?

Family time

Wow school is almost back for us and I was just thinking how short time can be. My little baby, who to me was born just a little while ago, is going into third grade. THIRD GRADE!!! What the heck happened??? She isn’t old enough for that! Sadly she is. Her little sister is going into first and we are trying to figure out what we will be doing for preschool for her other little sister in just a short time. I mean, next year they will all be going to a school. How does this happen? I think that what needs to happen here is when a man becomes a dad or a woman a mom they ought to be allowed, even paid to stay at home with their families. Until they can get the kids to the point where they are out of the house, the job of the parents ought to be simply to raise their kids. There should not be any point where the parents are going to have to look back and say “how did I miss those moments?” At least that is the way it ought to work, I think. Think of all the things that kids do these days. Cheerleading, Christmas plays and concerts, Little league, AYSO, Scouting (boy or girl) Church events, Art shows, Piano recitals, ballet, … the list is huge! So many things that a parent can miss. So there you go. My solution to these problems in a nutshell. Pay the parents to be there for their kids. To share in the memories and the joys. The triumphs and the losses. To kiss every scrape and cheer every smile. AND maybe if we did that there would be stronger families making happier kids and giving us all a brighter future.

What I would like to see in MP3’S.

I have been moving out of the dark ages of music slowly and there is one point I would like to make about WHY it is taking so long for me to do this. When I was a boy we got our music out of the magic box that spoke to us about the weather and played songs. There were many of these magic boxes all over the place. They were called radios. They were in cars and homes and businesses and all over the place. They brought an interesting world to our attention. One that we could not really experience in any other way. But we were somewhat subjected to their whims. Oh sure if I wanted to listen to a certain genre I could tune in a specific station that played that type of music otherwise you got what you got whether it was really what you wanted or not. Of course if there was a specific thing I wanted to listen to, say for example “Surfer Girl” by the Beach Boys or “Yesterday” by the Beatles then I could always turn to my trusty record player. The record player gave me choices that radio did not and it gave me a little bit of control over what I was listening to. Then there were Cassette Tapes. A magnificent invention which allowed me to take MY music wherever I went. Much more compact and useful. I would like to pause for a moment and point out that I got VERY good at both placing a needle in just the right groove to hear a song that I specifically liked and also at fast forwarding a cassette to the song that I wanted. But back to my original discussion. Briefly the recording industry realized that people wanted more ability to listen to what THEY wanted WHEN they wanted, thus the “8-track” was born. This gave even easier control over finding your song choice as well as allowing you to be able to listen to the same songs on a loop until you really got tired of it. This was also useful to D.J.s all over the world since they could get singles on an 8 track format and they never had to worry about rewinding the tape or anything. Sadly the 8-track never really got the chance to shine like it should have. For a couple of reasons… one, it was a niche type thing, a popular niche but a niche nonetheless. Two, it was bulkier than regular cassette tapes and thus limited the amount of music you could carry. OH and three, it was soon confronting a new technology, one which promised better fidelity and experience… the CD. WOW the CD… clear crisp sound over and over, no worries about proximity to magnets didn’t tear or break easily… often touted as “indestructible”. Of course we know better NOW still at the time in comparison to 8 tracks and cassettes it WAS a technically superior product. Of course one other point that went in it’s favor is the fact that, due to the laser coding of the disks the players for the cd’s could jump you straight to the exact song/s you wanted. They could also randomize the song/s, they could play them in a programmed order, you could really control the music the way you wanted. Enter the MP3. Selling point/s? (1) You can carry TONS of music all on a tiny device that fits easily in a pocket or your hand. (2) It sounds about as clear as a cd because it too is digitized. (3) You could find more individualized songs and set things up so that you weren’t stuck with just one type/genre. But here is where the problem comes in for me… Too many of these things are simply taking us back to the point where we had little to no control. I have had a few mp3s now. I think each of them had something that was good in them. But they don’t have ALL the things I want in one package. I started with a really cheap mp3 that actually let me program the order I wanted the songs in. it contained a lot of songs and it was great. The problem was it WAS cheap in the construction and did not last long before it pretty much broke. (not in software or whatever just in the case shattered.) I think one of the drawbacks there was that it was TOO small and thus too easily damaged. Of course then I got another that one was ok too. But there were a few issues there. This one didn’t let me categorize my music how I want. In fact it has a rather stubborn insistence that all the songs HAVE to be played in alphabetical sequence. There is no allowance in it for either MY wishes or the wishes of the makers of the music. In fact if loaded two different CDs (albums) onto the player it would have a fine disregard for all points except “which SONG comes first alphabetically?” However the MP3 also played video (AWESOME!!!) although it was small on the screen that was cool. It also will access FM radio so I get to listen still to other music as well and get news reports. Still I would have really liked to be able to listen to music in the order that I want not in the order that IT thinks is alphabetically superior. Well soon I will go onto a new player. I am unsure if this will be mine, or one that I give to my girls. The first mp3 I bought for my wife she immediately filled with lullabies and then “loaned” to the girls, talk about making me feel selfish. Her second mp3 she claims to be unable to make work the way she wants and for the most part she just listens to the radio now (full circle there huh?) although it does have features like the ability to do live recording so you could literally put what ever you want on it. So we will see, my next player has already been ordered and is on it’s way, I chose one that has a “Large screen” of 4 inches and hope that we may be able to use it to keep our youngest child occupied on an upcoming long trip. If it works well I may be allowing one of my girls to take over the old one, or I may let them have the new one… like I said, we will see. I hope that some day I will find the mp3 that is right for me. Until then…

Olympic time again.

I have to be honest. When I was much younger I didn't really care about the olympics...I didn't really care about ANY sport. (not even when I looked at the ultra mega totally cute gymnasts like Mary Lou Retton. I liked the girl but the sport just left me cold. Of course I was a couple of years younger than her but...) I blithely went around totally oblivious to the events in the sports world around me. Today is a little bit different. The 2012 Olympics started and I watched them. in fact I watched the last few Olympics but this is the first time I have felt obliged to Blog on them. Why might I pick this Olympics to blog? well simply because this one has meant more to me than any other yet. I have decided to skip the politics or the questions in this blog... maybe those will come later, today I want to talk about the reasons why I like the Olympics now and why I choose to blog now. I have found that there are some sports that I really do like to watch. I like Beach Volleyball, Archery, Soccer/Football and Women's Gymnastics. The last one I think is because I have daughters and there are times that I see their determination or youth on that mat in the girls who are competing. the reason why I chose to Blog this though is what happened a couple of nights ago with the women's Gymnastics. I watched the Russian team trying to compete and no one can deny it was an utter disaster for them. My heart went out to them and as I watched one girl doing her routine I saw my daughter's face on hers. the determination and afterwards the pain I saw was one that I could easily have seen on my child's face. I think that is what helped me realize why I was not a big sports person before either, I just don't come by the killer instinct naturally like that. I had to have it trained into me. To go ahead and mash your opponent into the ground after they have been handed an enormous blow like that... I am not sure I could have done it so easily. I DID see the value and need for the American team to succeed and to do their best. I also am aware that they needed to perform at their best for the audience as well as themselves. I know that if the American team had not done their best they would have cheated themselves, the audience, the rest of the Americans they represented and even the Russians a grave disservice. I feel fairly confident that if I had to go out and do my best even though my opponent had suffered so badly I would have been able to do so. Still My heart truly did go out to those girls. This isn't the first time And I think that is one of the points to the whole event. How many of us held our breath when the Jamaican bobsled team had that crash? how many of us jumped into the air screaming for joy when the American Hockey team won against all odd and against the Russians? How many of us cried when we saw Derek Redmond or Kerri Strug continue on even when they were so badly injured? All of these moments the ups and downs are part and parcel of why we get so hooked on these sports. Yeah I guess the American team could have gone easier on the Russians, but if they had that would not have been the Olympic spirit. Possibly worse than that we can see the effect this attitude has on our society today. there are a lot of people out there who could be better if our society would let them. Anyway. I think I will go ahead and enjoy the Olympics. I have a better understanding of the whole thing and of myself. And that makes it worthwhile. Oh I gotta go... Swimming is coming on.

Children and Marriage

In today’s culture I see a lot of problems. And frankly I do not know how to address them when talking with my children. The biggie that hit me most recently was about being faithful to your marriage vows. I know several people who have been less than faithful. And I see/hear the reports in the news. It seems to be the “In thing” to get a divorce today. Then we have groups of people saying they want to change the fundamental understanding of what marriage even is. So what is marriage then? Well I would say that it is what happens when two people love each other and want to stay together forming a family. But if everyone is getting divorced right and left then what hope is there for that ideal? What is love? In first Corinthians (chapter 13 verses 4-7ESV) Paul tells us… “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on it’s own way’ it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things”. The point here is that Love requires active work. We cannot think only of ourselves or our needs. We have to think of the other/s whom we profess to love. This is even truer in Marriage. For a good marriage to work BOTH sides have to come together to work at it side by side in the long haul. A lot of people get focused on the wedding and fail to think past that point. Now a wedding can be a very stressful event. And marriage can be stressful. I think that a wedding’s preparations are designed to be pretty stressful so that you can get the idea of how well you work together as a couple is stressful situations. The problem is that a wedding is designed with a goal in mind. A sprint if you will. A marriage however is a long-term deal. A marathon in comparison. The thing is that this marathon has no end in sight... I do not mean this to sound like it is a negative. But I would advise you to think about it. When you look at your beloved’s face can you wake up next to that daily for the rest of your life? What will you do when she gets cancer? Are you prepared to care for her? What will you do when he has a stroke? Are you prepared to do all the things for him that he can’t? This might include bathing him/her. Giving your loved one medicine/s cleaning up vomit or worse. Can you put his/her needs above your own? Even if it going to be for the next year? What if it is for the next 5 years or 15? Love isn’t just about feeling. Love is work! When he wants to watch Football, are you ok with that? Can you let him do that? Even though you want to go out to dinner? What about when she wants to go look at fabric and patterns at the fabric store. Can you go along and support her? Even if that means you have to give up the fishing trip? That is what love is. Putting their needs above your own. And it is not easy, BUT it IS worth it.

My Favorite season.

Today I want to talk about my favorite season. Now don’t get me wrong! Just because I have a favorite season, that does not mean that I do not enjoy the others. In fact I intend to outline the good things involved in ALL the seasons. But I do still have a favorite. Let me begin by talking about all the seasons. Let us start with the “beginning” of the cycle, Spring! A wonderful season with new life, new birth and rebirth. The trees get new buds, the flowers grow and bloom, the rain falls down blessing the earth, the animals start to come out and all the soft green and growth has a unique beauty that is never seen in any other month. The smells of spring are so fresh and clean. The freshly turned earth, the new flowers and all. It is a truly awesome time of the year. And the holidays involved! Easter with it’s jelly beans, Chocolate Bunnies, and marshmallow peeps. Or St Patricks day with all the “wearing ‘o’ the green” and fun. Or Valentines day with the protestations of love and the promise of future love. Baseball starts in the spring and the promise of what is to come is very palpable. It isn’t long until spring flows into summer, our second season to look at. This is a time of heat and play. There is work involved but it really seems almost a peripheral thing. We start to see the harvests come in and we also see more time to do things like go to the swimming pool or the watering hole or the creek or wherever and do all the water sports. Traditionally now it is a time of vacations and sports. School comes to a close and parks open. Baseball is now in full swing and is rapidly heading to the big Finish. We go to the theme parks and the lakes and we play. We get out in the sun and work on all the projects that have been waiting for our attention for so long. We go camping and we enjoy Children’s lemonade stands. There are Rodeos and Baseball games and fireworks and campouts and cookouts. For food/s we look at having grilled chicken, Burgers, Hot dogs, and Steaks. Fresh Corn on the cob and cold watermelon, Freshly churned Ice cream and snow cones. The Holidays include Memorial day, Mother’s day, Father’s Day and the Fourth of July. Truly a time of fun in the sun. But then there comes Fall. Our third season of consideration. The weather is cooling off. The trees start to change colors to the reds and golds that they have gone through before. The wildlife starts to slow down as they finish their work in preparation for the winter and they start going into hibernation. Football has started and we start to drink Apple cider and eating candy apples and popcorn balls. School is back in session, and the air takes on a new crispness. All the harvests are in, the canning and preserving is finishing up and we start to look forward to the next year and even the next season. We start to build (and smell) fires to keep us warm. There are harvest parties, hayrides, and a kind of restfulness. We have the holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving. Raking of leaves and playing in them. This is a magical time of the year. Which leads to the final season. Winter! White and snow and Ice. A time to play in the snow; make snow angels and lick icicles. Snowmen start popping up and colored lights come out and trees move into our houses and a whole new music start ringing through the air. When we finish with our play we come in to enjoy hot cocoa, Candy canes ginger bread houses and freshly baked cookies. We look forward to the BIG event of winter, Christmas! With all the things that attend. The presents, the dinner with Turkey and Scalloped potatoes, Green bean casserole Sweet potatoes, Pecan and pumpkin pies and Eggnog! We sing carols, we go to plays and cantatas and parties. There is a new sense of magic and wonder as we watch the little ones gape and wonder at the lights and the presents wrapped in all the colors. There is a sense of bonhomie a general feeling of wanting to make life better for those in need. We hang stockings and we all feel an anticipation of good things to come. We feel linked to the past in ways that we never really feel through any of the other seasons as we read A Christmas Carol and watch A Christmas story. We think of the ways that Christmas has been celebrated for centuries. If we do not celebrate Christmas there is still something for us. The Menorahs and Kwanzaa candles glowing and adding their lights to the riot of colors and lights that adorn the houses where Christmas is celebrated. We get an up close picture of the joy that children feel, the magic that they sense and we try to keep that alive, for them and for us with tales of Christmases past and reading the stories that were written before in celebration of this time. We relive our happy memories of those days from before as we live vicariously through the kids, Or just through our own joy, through this time. So which one is my favorite? To be honest I love all the seasons to some extent many for the reasons listed above. My second favorite time is probably Winter. With all the food (and presents) of Winter, and the things linked with that, I find myself particularly enamored of the links to the past that fit in there, to think that some of these traditions have been practiced for centuries. It makes me feel linked to the past AND the future. But I think my favorite time is Fall. It is the best of them because it takes the best of Summer and Winter and puts those together with it’s own brand of style. There are smells that you will NEVER smell any other time. You start anticipating the fun (And presents) of winter and you find yourself linked to the past in a similar way as you might during the winter. And sometimes the anticipation is better than the actual event. There are still lots of outdoor sports, there is magic in the falling leaves and color changes and weather changes. There is anticipation for Halloween and Thanksgiving. You get the turkey dinner and the pumpkin pie and the scalloped potatoes and the Eggnog of winter. While still enjoying the warmer days of late summer where It is still warm enough for a few last grill outs. There is still corn on the cob and you can finish off the watermelon in the fridge or the ice creams and Popsicle’s that are still in the freezer. And yet this is THE time to enjoy Apple cider (cold and Hot) and Candy Apples. (you won’t find those in your stocking) and best of all, The bugs all go away! If you compare a year to a day Spring is sort of like when you wake up and you are still getting ready for the day Summer is the middle of the day where you are the busiest, working and playing hard, facing the heat while dealing with the chores. Winter is the late evening and night where you sleep and rest in preparation for the coming dawn. This is when you Dream and hope. But FALL! Fall is the early evening hours. When the fireflies come out, when you slow down and look back on the day and say “It was good!” When your dreams have all been met (or failed), when you rest and know that you worked hard and you can now enjoy the fruits of your labors. It is that drowsy between time where you are not really asleep but you are not really awake. When you are comfortable no longer tiring yourself out but you are tired enough that you feel happy. And that is why it is my favorite time of year.

Movies then and now

So lately I got to thinking. I was thinking about movies and the way they have evolved and the way that people have changed over the years. I thought about the fact that the language and subject/s we consider “O.K.” for kids consumption has changed. I mean the first Star Trek movie that came out in the 70’s was rated R when it came out. Today that exact same movie would get a rating no worse than PG. @0 years before that when They were making the movie “It’s a wonderful life.” The film makers (and MPAA) were struggling to make a movie that would be suitable for kids… in order to achieve that goal they had to take out the word/s (SHUT UP? STUPID? LOOK IT UP). These words were considered tame in the 70’s and in today’s society they are largely considered childish themselves. It seems that There are a lot of people today (indeed even in the late 70’s and 80’s) who seem to think that any movie that is labeled G has to be “made for kids”. (say that sentence with disgust or scorn and you got the idea behind that sentence.) The thing is that they do not have to be that way. I watched the movie “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory.” When I was a kid. As a kid I loved it. Watching it with my daughters does not bother me (certainly not the way the remake Charlie and the chocolate factory does.) but when I am watching Willy Wonka and seeing what Gene Wilder did as an adult I can tell you that this is definitely not a “kids only” movie. There is subtlety and context that completely goes over my kid’s heads. But it makes the movie even richer for me now than it did then. In order for me to appreciate those subtleties I had to mature and grow. In the 80’s an up and coming director included a rather risqué word in his new sci fi movie. He did this because he wanted to draw the kids who only wanted to see “cool grown up movies" who would have refused to see anything rated G. This attitude remains to this day. This is a shame because that movie was an excellent movie in it’s own right and has been an iconic movie for my generation. And still today the movie, E.T. has spawned references and toys and whole movie production companies that never would have existed otherwise… and, too where would Drew Barrymore be today without HER part in that movie? Too many movies have to kow-tow to that idea today. Only it is even worse for them. I am starting to thin that it would be much better if people stop seeing movies in order to “Look Cool” for the other kids instead of watching a movie just because it is a GOOD movie. We need to tell Hollywood that we want movies of substance that makes us better for having seen them. Movies like “Rudy”, “The Rookie”, “Fireproof”, “the Blind side” and so on. These are movies that have a message to them, they are mostly well made and they have a great theme to them. What’s more they are uplifting and encouraging and have a message to send. There ARE movies with harsher ratings that fit those criteria as well. I think that too many of them have had to do the same thing as Steven Spielberg, and so they add gratuitous words or violence that just try to capture a bigger audience, to me this is disappointing. These movies would be better served, I think, to have left the gratuity OUT. If they had then I would feel comfortable letting MY kids watch them, I might even sit down to watch them WITH my kids and then we would have an opportunity to bond. I think that is all I better say on the subject though it feels unfinished… maybe you can all help me finish this article by adding your thoughts on the subject and then we can have a dialog about it. In any event, Hope your day is a great one