Confessions of a Hospital Security Guard

There is something to be said for the feeling of polyester covering every square inch of your body; the comforting weight of a grossly oversized flashlight dangling from your side; and the knowledge that you are in no way trained to handle anything remotely resembling an emergency. Yep, being a hospital security guard is a little bit like being a Navy SEAL, without the excitement, exercise or state of the art weapon systems. In fact, if Navy SEAL's spent most of their time sitting in tiny glass booths telling everyone in ear shot about the time they restrained a patient three years ago and eating everything in sight, they would be exactly like hospital security guards. There are thousands of brave men and women out there doing jobs you and I can't even imagine just to break even at the end of the month. And, I'm sure there is a desperation worse than the kind it takes for a grown man to put on an ill fitting uniform, a meaningless badge and a walkie-talkie, but I can't think of it right now.

I know what you're thinking, "What a stupid job! Why would any one want to be a hospital security guard?" But, without security guards, what kind of world would we live in? We'd be over run with snot nosed skateboarding hooligans and a catastrophic oversupply of donuts. Any one could park anywhere they wanted. No one would hassle you about wearing your company name badge; even though you've worked with the company for ten years and know the guard whose hassling you on a first name basis. We wouldn't have such gems as "Try to calm down ma'am!"; "I'm just doing my job."; and "Stop or I'll tell you again!" Chuck Norris would only be known for his Total Gym commercials, Block Buster rentals of Super Troopers would drop by 89%, and martial arts supply stores would have to close their doors forever. You could forget about national security and border control if our parking structures and 7-Elevens are left vulnerable. Yeah, get rid of security guards and the very fabric of society starts to unravel. Chaos, war and disaster would quickly ensue and the Antichrist would make his first appearance as a trespassing teenage pot smoker with an "I (heart) cops" tee shirt and ripped blue jeans.

Okay, maybe the world wouldn't completely fall apart, but you get the point. The truth is, we all have a place in the grand scheme of things; it's just that some of us have missed ours completely.

There are all kinds of security guards on this planet, but hospital security is a special breed. It ranks, in the hierarchical structure that is modern medicine, somewhere between MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus, [a drug hesistant staph infection]) and Nationalized Healthcare. Security doesn't exactly fit into the grandiose picture of patient care that doctors, nurses and administrators have in mind when they decide to go into the healing arts. Guards don't add anything to the bottom line and consume one hundred times their body weight at staff picnics and potlucks. Doctors despise them, nurses are afraid of them and Risk Management doesn't sleep at night knowing they have the keys to every door in the building. So why, you might ask, do hospitals have security guards? I don't have a straight answer for you. Maybe we all like to take a certain amount of risk and have inherently self-destructive tendencies. Maybe it helps those who have succeeded, to have an example of what could have been if a single gene had spiced left when it should have gone right. Whatever the reason, hospital security is here and it would take a whole lot of jelly filling to get them to leave.

All this was on my mind in 2003 when I decided to infiltrate their ranks and find the answers to these and many other questions. I would bravely enter the under belly world of power trips and cholesterol to get to the root of this highly secretive and close-knit fraternity. Like Hunter S. Thompson and Robert Young Pelton before me, only more dangerous and dynamic, I vowed to blend in, investigate and report what I found behind the polyester wall of silence.

The two years that followed would change my life and my waistband forever. I would come to know real fear, insatiable hunger and a power unfit for mortal humans. In the realm of fake tickets and yellow strobe lights, there is no room for error. A rent a cop can smell a cheap imitation from a mile away and you better be ready to consume donuts, lots and lots of donuts. If you hesitate, even once, your cover is blown. If I've learned one thing from my time in security work, it's that you should never underestimate a man with a plastic badge and a real set of handcuffs.