A Long Day At The Fair

So today was a rather long day. I was called at midnight by my boss  the night before asking which of two shifts I would like, one from 7am to 3pm or 3 pm to 11pm... I asked if I could have both, and he was thrilled. turned out I dont think I have ever been in the sun for such an extended time. My forehead got a sunburn, and after almost 17 hours, my legs feel like they are gonna fall off.

Last night had many interesting things happening. When I got there at 7am, I was on the same gate that I was on the night before.  Nothing much happened for the first part of my rather long shift. About 3pm they switched my to being a "Roamer" a person who just wonders around, looking for stuff, bringing water to the other guards, finding lost children, listening for trouble calls from the other guards to back them up, and responding to the break calls of other guards. I did this for a few hours, it was fun. I got to drive around a golf cart filled with cold water to make sure the other guards stayed hydrated.

I also helped find 4 lost children for the night. in total we had 24 lost children this night. One parent we decided needed to be shot with a taser (Just Kidding). She lost her two children (Who were standing in line for a ride, the parent wandered away) We found the children a few minutes later exiting the ride. Rejoined with her children everything was alright, we thought. Just a few minutes later, the same woman came back to us, she had lost them again. This time they all had gone to the restroom, and when she was done, she didn't wait around for her two boys, she just started looking at all the displays until she realized she was nowhere near the restrooms anymore. By the time she had come to report them missing the two boys had also found a guard and was standing by, figuring she would report them missing. Grrr, some people!!! Anyway...

I asked my Supervisor if I could be on the team of guards for the special event tonight, which he agreed to. That was awesome because it was a demolition derby! I love those, so it was cool that not only did I get to see it, but unlike everyone else who spent $23.00 to be there, I was being paid to be there. Just in case something happened. :0)

After the derby, I was stationed at a different gate. It was the gate that all the vendors were going to line up at to get back in to finally tear down their booths. I was told not to allow anyone on with a vehicle. I was also told "Tell them NO! and keep telling them NO until we tell you that you can tell them yes" This part of the night was kind of boring until we spotted a creature trying to leave without a release form. It was a Black Widow spider, and it was about 4 inches across, counting the legs of course. This being a highly poisonous creature we had to protect the park patrons. So Another guard and I tried to "escort" it off the park walkways, but that just kept making it madder and madder. It started shooting webs out at the stick and leather straps we were trying to use to get it to move. It struck out at the stick a couple times. Then one couple and their 6 year old boy came thru the gates. The mother asked what were doing, and when we told her, she grabbed her cemera phone to take a couple shots. Her boy ran over and grabbed mom's leg. when he saw the spider, he screamed," I LOVE SPIDERS" and ran twards it to try and pick it up. we stopped him from getting close enough to pick it up, but not close enough for him to stick out his leg and stomp on it. While stomping on it he yelled,"SQUISH!" And that was the end of the last interesting thing for this shift.

First day on the job...

Ok, I have a feeling that I am going to see a lot of very interesting things while working for Metro Security, and wanted to have a place to keep all them together. So here it is.

Anyway, Finished my 8 hours of Basic training with Metro on Thursday, Sept 9th. Passed all the tests with flying colors. Went down to D.O.P.L. (Department of Occupational and Professional Licensing) and paid the $100.00 to get my Security License. Friday, Sept 10th I returned to Metro for orientation and to get my uniforms... Orientation went fine, but the uniforms are another matter. Seems big guys like me are the "average" in the security industry. They didnt have any uniforms in my size. I had the choice of one 2 sizes smaller or 4 sizes bigger. Neither was going to work, and I can't go on the jobsite unless I have a proper uniform.

Fast forward thru many calls and txts to Wednesday, Sept 15th. Finally I get a txt back that they have a used shirt that once belonged to an EMT. They have removed the EMT patch, so now there was a huge dried glue spot about 6 inches across on the right breast area. he said if I worked a grave that it wouldn't matter. So I called the Site Supervisor at the Utah State Fair, my first post, to let him know that I could start working on Thursday, Sept 16th, and his response was," I have a shift that needs filled right now, can you be here in 30 minutes?" I still had not been downtown to get the single uniform they had. I informed him about the glue spot, and he didn't care, so I told him it would be an hour.

My brother-in-law Emer was kind enough to run me downtown to get the uniform, wait for me to change into it, and then run me out to the fairgrounds.

Now FINALLY on the jobsite, I have to try and find one guy in the thousands that were there, he was not picking up his phone, and I have never seen this guy before. It took twenty minutes to find out where out CP(Command Post) was set up at and to find the site supervisor Josh. He put me on a golf cart and took me straight to Gate 6 at the fairgrounds. My instructions boiled down to, you are not the employee of the Fairgrounds, but you are there to back them up. Do what security they ask of you.

I relieved the guard they had been staying late until I could get there. Having been my first day, I didnt know that I was supposed to get the radio from him, or that I was supposed to even have a radio. I was stationed at gate 6, the animal exit gate which aslo was a ticketing gate as well. One of my favorite parts was when people were leaving with the animals, I took their release form, which told me how many animals and of what kind they were taking out. I then got to count every animal in all the trailers. That was pretty fun. Later on when they realized I was not answering my radio, they sent someone by. only to find that I didn't have a radio, so they brought me a radio.

The rest of the night was pretty eventful, from what I heard on the radio. We had a guy with his 3 children in the Bunny Barn, throwing fireworks at the bunnies just hours before the judging was to take place. Scorching some of the fur on a few of the bunnies. We had a man walking around with a small blue cooler on wheels selling illegal firearms out of it. When we detained him waiting for the police, we found 17 handguns in the cooler, plus 2 on his waistband. The two on his waist he was legally carrying, the others were definitely illegal. We had a drunk lady passed out in the horse pen in a pool of her own vomit. All in all an interesting night. At 10pm all gates except mine were closed, and I was flooded with trailers full of animals to count. Finally was relieved from my position at 11:45pm and headed to the CP to sign out. What an interesting first day on the job!