Where to start

About Barney?

That's toughie.

This guy really isn't new to me... When I first started with this company in October 2004 I worked with him down in Bastian, VA at a pharmaceutical warehouse. I was introduced and it was he who showed me around the place. He gave me a tour of the buildings and showed me where and when to check, and I thought it strange that he referred to a notebook for each step in his shift... Especially after he told me he'd been at there five years at this point. I really began to wonder about him when he checked his notebook for the alarm code to disarm the system... I asked if they'd recently changed the code. Nope. Been the same for the five years he's been there.

And yet he still checked the code on a slip of paper he carried with him every time he entered and exited the building.

Are you following where I'm going with this yet?

Once I reported in to relieve him from duty early and I noticed the gate arm was broken at the front entrance and splinters of wood were still strewn out on the driveway. He didn't say anything about it in his briefing to me and shrugged when I asked him about it. I relieved him and decided to read through his patrol log... In a six-hour shift he managed to fill up seven pages of logs, noting the times of everything that happened on his post, down to the exact times his wife called, he called his wife, what the phone calls were about... When he used the restroom... Made a pot of coffee and how much creamer was left, when it started to rain and when it stopped. But not word one about the gate arm.

I had to find out from the UPS driver that Barney had closed the gate on his truck...

This is what I'm dealing with here.

Fast-forward to a week ago.

I begin by telling him the laundry list of things wrong with the truck and that the boss was aware of the problems and had intentions of getting them fixed shortly. I made him aware of this because on our patrol logs there's spaces to fill in about the condition of the vehicle and repairs needed and was trying to let him know that it was unnessessary to log the problems in, they were going to be fixed that week.

After two hours of me explaining what and when to check things and his furious note-taking I left him alone to have at it.

Not a really difficult job. Here it is in a nutshell: Check the office, diner and deli mart every half hour, three houses my boss owns on Church St. Every hour. The last hour of the deli mart's hours before they close for the night, hang out there until they count the register and have it secured in the safe. One last thing, make yourself visible in town all night as a deterrent, especially along the properties on State Street.

Not all that difficult.

A monkey can do it.

One of, if not the easiest job for the pay I've ever done. I do this for the same hourly rate as EMT's at the local rescue squad get paid. Definitely not rocket science.

Enter Barney.

I have my first real weekend off in a long while and enjoy every minute. I get back into work Sunday night and it's then I get an earfull.

He rattled the front door on the diner so hard he jarred it open, then woke the owner up and reported it left unsecured... Wrote a FOURTEEN page patrol log for his first shift, including TWO PAGES of things wrong with the truck... Didn't show up to the deli mart until five minutes after they closed and proceeded to turn on the coffee pot after the employees had cleaned everything up, poured one small cup and left the rest to waste... That pissed the owner of the deli off so much he was about to cut us off of the free coffee. That's enough right there to get my hackles up.

I checked his reports and he's still having a major problem figuring out the 24-hour time, or military time. Half of it is in military time, the other half in AM/PM... I checked his mileage report and the furthest he drove on a shift so far was two miles when I, on average, go over forty miles on a given night...

Another thing. What looks like a driveway into the property where the office is looks like just a driveway to the place but in actuality it's a public road as there are several houses down a holler behind the building. He was stopping people and asking them where they were going in the middle of the night and couldn't understand why they were getting pissed off at him... This was after I told him it was a public street, by the way.

Last but not least, last Thursday morning when he came to relieve me from my six-hour shift at 2 AM, he hinted around carrying a gun on duty and asked me what handgun I would recommend?

NONE!

The mere thought of him in the possession of a loaded firearm sends me into convulsions. I'm a very strong believer and advocate in the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution and the people's right to keep and bear arms, but this guy shouldn't even be allowed to posses a pointed stick.

Give me strength to get through this and to get on with the railroad really, really soon...

Oh, and he's procreated several times.

Copyright 2006 Thomas J Wolfenden