@nprofile1q...So many security guards these days! What changed?
All 3 supermarkets in town have security guards. The government agent's office has a security guard. Our new hospital employs more security guards than we have RCM Police for our whole town! I don't see more violence, just more fear perhaps.
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OK, so I just looked up some statistics and here's an infographic from StatsCan
Nearly all types of crime are down. Across Canada crime is down everywhere, except the North West Territories - what's going on there? There are some provinces +/- 1% or so, which seems ignore-able.
My province of British Columbia (BC) is down a whopping 11% - is that because we're super good or because we were really bad and just getting up to being decent? I have no idea. I need to look at the methodology they use to create the index numbers.
Anyhow, only two crimes are up: sex crimes against children (+6%) and shoplifting (+14%). Since child porno is down 15%, I'm guessing the crimes are from increased reporting?
Anyhow, the shoplifting number might explain the security guards in the grocery stores. Hard to believe it's worth paying a guy ~$30/hr to simply stand there for the most part, but maybe 'shrinkage' is that high? I'd love to see numbers.
I could ask the guy who used to own the Canadian Tire here until last year - he was always complaining in the coffee shop about shoplifters - seeing the same ones, even in the same day after the RCMP had arrested them already... Notably, Canadian Tire does not have security guards.
It must make sense money-wise or the stores wouldn't do it I suppose. Then again, large corporation are just as often to be as idiotic as large governments.
Now. The hospital - that makes no sense. For the past two years I worked in and around the hospital. The guards are wandering around aimlessly for the most part. I can see one being in A&E and maybe Main to deal with any violent types. You know where there are never any security guards? The psych ward!
I know what you're thinking :-) but I was there once a week to deal with their plants!
In any case, I think 35 security guards for the hospital is ridiculous. Ditto for the ones at the government office - waste of money. Heck, the government liquor store right beside it has no security guards.
And don't even start me on airport security - it's a show. For a few years I had security pass and an AVOP, so I could drive air side out to our cargo charter (narcotics and banks). It's a joke. The only people to suffer are the paying passengers. And, sure, that was only YXT (Terrace, BC) - small town, but I have a friend who was an electrician at YVR (Vancouver International) and he told me the situation was just as leaky there too.
There's like a climate of fear driven by the mass media and things like fb and twit.
I think it was 5-6 years ago that I was sent to Kitimat every day for a week or so. I was installing alarms and cameras with recording in homes. After the first one or two, I realized that all the houses were management at Rio Tinto Alcan. There was a strike looming and they were all afraid of their employees! Crazy. Really.
OK, to lighten things up.
The local Loblaw warehouse style grocery store used to have a woman standing at the exit checking receipts. I found it kind of insulting and I never saw her ever call anyone out for shoplifting.
Anyhow, one day buddy's wife dispatched us to buy a box of over-ripe bananas for cheap, so she could make muffins out of them. We came back to the house with her bananas still giggling.
I got to the exit ahead of my friend and 'assumed the position' on the wall next to the woman checking receipts. Then my idiot friend did the same thing :-)
We were both nearly 40 at the time, just hadn't quite grown up. Oh, she was so mad :-) I never liked her much anyhow, even though she was drop dead good looking from Haiti or Jamaica - I forget.
I guess we were a bit of a spectacle, because not long after there was no one at the door doing that useless task.
When buddy's wife found out why we were laughing she freaked out. "Oh! You idiots! I can never show my face in that store again..." and so on. Bit of an over-reaction IMO.
