The Guardsman Letters No.23

Deja Vu.

— Somewhere in Eastern Ontario —
Nestled inside a small heated metal Dickie Moore styled box I leaned outside the cracked open door into the misting rain. “Odd weather for it nearly being Christmas.” I thought.  

A small white delivery van with a driver sat outside my perimeter gate painting me with his high beams and floods. Which was really very considerate of him; it was clear to anyone who could see me that I wanted and needed more light. The grimace was just because I didn’t know what was good for me.  

I gave the driver another hand wave and shrug to signal that I hadn’t yet managed to find the warehouseman he was told to contact; the look that came across his face inside the cabin of the van told me that he was steadily becoming as annoyed by this; as I was of the glaring lights. Call it kismet I guess. 

I ducked my head back into the guardhouse and slid back into the (barely) rolling chair, and (with far too much effort to be called) rolled back to my paperwork.  

It would make only too much sense to have a collection of numbers to contact site officials… I mean this is only the main site for a nationwide corporation… For fuck sakes I’d take a rolodex if they’d had one. Sadly however neither of these things exist and I can’t find the contacts number in my immensely limited paperwork… and… given we are the security company which provides national support to this company, we could only be given the most state of the art communication equipment.  

My voice dripping with what I could only hope was a bafflingly obvious amount of condescension I key’ the PTT button on the site phone again and brought it up to my face.  

“North Gate to Warehouse; can you hear me now? 

I let the button go and received the expected high pitched beep, I tilted the screen inadvertently and blinded myself with the reflection from the headlights. With a sigh I got back out of the hardly comfortable chair and hung my head out the door again towards the driver and yelled… 

“Anything on your end?”

 The rain fell harder and battered the side of my face and the door indiscriminately. The driver gave me a befuddled shrug and head shake motion indicating that he had been just as unsuccessful as I had been.  

It dawned on me that all of the security I’d worked with at the warehouse before my transfer here would routinely turn the volume down on the site phone… 

“That’s why they aren’t hearing me…” quickly I snapped the phone over in my hand and thumbed my way over to the internal messaging system and fire a text off to the guard on duty.  

The moment of triumph passed almost immediately when I remembered last week and how long it had ACTUALLY taken this same guard to understand P.T.T technology. (Push To Talk)  

This poor driver had already driver well over five hours to get here, on a Friday night after normal delivery hours on a special trip, and somehow the two of us had been trying for almost the last hour to raise someone who could tell him where he was supposed to go… which despite the constant glare of headlights through the window was NOT ‘to hell and quickly.’ 

I snapped the button again returning to my chair and letting the door waft in the breeze and rain.  

“Peterson to Mobile…” silence…. 

“Peterson to Supervisor?” silence….. 

I looked clear across the street to the other side of several parking lots and industrial buildings, through the drizzling rain; to the small square shape that I knew to be the guard hut of another of our buildings.

“Chance to Gatehouse,” silence… something that looks like movement…. Finally! 

Silence. 

“THANKS GERI.” Still silence.  

Dumbfounded I stared at the phone in my hand. There was a tap at my window, which I slid open. It was the driver.  

“I get ahold of someone else; he say to drop everything at Front Desk.” He gestures away from my secure gate towards the main entrance.  

Knowing that no hazardous materials are stored in this warehouse nor delivered in those trucks I can’t see anything against it… but knowing just how much room front desk has behind it I ask him just what he’s carrying. He rolls open a side panel and shows me several small boxes that would fit in my trunk.  

“Well, if thats what the old foreman told you then drop them there; at least he’ll tell THIS foreman where it is on Monday. Get out of the rain man and get home!” I gave him a smile and a wave, which he returns and finally he steers his van away and takes the glaring lights off my hut.  

I make a few notes in my notebook as well as the site log; knowing full well that I’ve been the only person to write in the thing in the last three months, then I noticed the clock in the microwave as I reached for my coffee. That whole ordeal took an hour… 

I checked my watch just to be sure. My site phone… MY two phones… yep… an hour.  

I key’d the button on the PTT again. 

“Peterson to all channels… Delivery was a fake… attacked with boxcutter… but okay now, only lightly killed. Thanks for assistance.”  

Setting the phone back down I leaned back in the chair and threw a leg over the side of the desk. I turned on a playlist of Post Modern Jukebox. 

“I’m still surrounded by muppets.”