Third Time’s The Harm

I worked security for a major military contractor at one point. Our supervisor liked using our ‘random’ search number as a tool for punishment for perceived grievances with us. Normally, our search number was something around fifteen, meaning we would only pull over and search every fifteenth car and every contractor truck. It was very cold, and very miserable in the mornings when we would suddenly have a couple of hundred employees and contractors show up between 0500 and 0800.

This day, our supervisor got upset because when he came in at 0400 for his day shift, he was the fifteenth car. We did our best to search his vehicle promptly and completely, so he couldn’t say we weren’t doing the searches properly. Deciding that he must now ruin everyone else’s day, he set the day shift search number to three. So, we complied.

There was only enough room for three cars/trucks to be pulled over at once, and once that was done, we would usually stop searches until the others were completed, keeping traffic moving.

Not today.

This time, we filled the search area, and then stopped traffic until all three vehicles were cleared, then allowed two cars through, pulled over the third, allowed two, pulled third, allowed two, pulled third, stopped all traffic, and started searches.

We ended up with a line of cars waiting to get into the plant that went two miles long. It got so long that the local police got involved up the road as people were blocking traffic in some intersections. Then came the phone call from a three-star general that stuck in that traffic a mile up the road. Suddenly, we were called to cease all searches for the morning.

I later heard that it had been too little too late to cancel the ridiculous searches, and our major military contractor lost a billion-dollar contract out of the deal. And that supervisor was initially going to be fired, but negotiated his way to just being busted down to a regular guard. We were unionized, so he started lowest on the seniority chart, and got stuck working all the mandatory overtime, and all the worst posts, including the one he had made miserable that morning.

Two weeks later, said contract was renegotiated after the company I worked for explained that the person responsible for the general’s limousine being held up in traffic for almost an hour had been “reassigned”. No innocent jobs were lost.