What is being a factory security guard
really like?
1.
And The Hallway Echoes Eternal by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
21 years ago was the last time (before this week) that I stepped foot in the above hallway. The last time I saw it, it was smooth, gleaming, sterile and freshly painted. I walked it nightly for 3 years of my life and I hope I can snag you for a bit to tell you about it... but it is going to be long. This is a different kind of post for me – this one is a memoire where I can give you a firsthand account of the ridiculous escapades of what it was like to work here as a security guard. It is word heavy; if there’s too much reading, please just skip through, check out pics and leave a photo comment if you see something interesting. 2.
Industrial Beam by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
I started working here during one of the most vicious strikes in the company’s history. It was winter time, and the workers would throw barbed-wire balls in the snow of the parking lot, hoping to deflate the car tires of security staff. Some of them must have worked for the same security company as us in the past, as they had stuffed security guard dummies, in proper uniform, strung up in the trees with ropes around their necks. The strikers used them as practice targets, shooting golf balls at them when they were bored on the picket line.
3.
Let's Go Dark by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
4.
Thick Oilly Air by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
When the strike ended, I was a bit surprised that the company kept the same guards on site. There were four of us. Nick was a turban-wearing Indian who read porn magazines all night. Jerry was retired and just looking to get out of the house and do something. Max was an aspiring lawyer who would rip the collective agreement apart line-by-line in his spare time. He even got a parking ticket at Brock University thrown out once because he argued their free parking lot was south of Townline Road, and therefore he received a ticket in Thorold written by a Saint Catharines employee. I was a university student who was really only working security so that I could get paid to do my homework all night. I was looking for a quiet site with little demands, and Alcan Automotive fit the bill perfectly. The job was for insurance purposes only: all I had to do was walk the production floor (shown below) during the shutdown hours and read the digital temperatures on five different furnaces. This was back in the day before Internet streaming, so they had to be checked manually. If a furnace was overheating, as was often the case, all I had to do was wake up the next maintenance guy on the list and have him come in to the plant for ten minutes to fix it. For that trip, they received 6 hours of regular pay.
5.
Symphony of Sunlight by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
My favorite furnace was the following absolute monstrosity – the dreaded MPH. Right out of Terminator 2, this sucker held a lake of fiery molten metal around the clock. Max and I used to dare each other what we could throw in here when we were bored. It started out with an old phone book and quickly escalated to an entire bike that we found abandoned in the field behind the plant.
6.
Liquid Metal Monster by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
7.
In the Mouth by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
It didn’t take long for fallout from the strike to cascade through the plant. The worst incident occurred in the men’s change room behind the giant red face in the next photo. One particular scab, N.G., crossed the picket line during the strike and got paid a few hours doing management a favor. He was attacked by several guys in the change room who stripped him naked and anally assaulted him with the wooden end of a broomstick. As often goes in such closed circles, nobody was ever reprimanded. N.G. walked by the security office in dead silence for weeks, never saying hello. Life in the plant went on as usual.
8.
Spewing Broken English by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Head office never checked up on us, so we were free to design the work schedule however we wanted. Crazily enough, it occurred to us that we could have entire weeks off whenever we wanted if we were willing to work two 16-hour shifts in a row, with an 8-hour break in between. It was so insane that I didn’t even bother going home for the 8 hours; I would instead sleep in the room in the next photo. It was the infirmary, which was dark and quiet, and there was a comfortable medical bed on the far wall behind the bathtub. The other guard would knock on the door 8 hours later to wake me so that I could continue with another 16 hour shift, sucking the life right out of me.
9.
Accident Report by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
I would never have guessed that the infirmary would one day look like it does in the above photo. Even more so, I would never have guessed that the tub would become the site of a pseudo-domination lesbian porn shoot by Toronto explorer and UER member Rashomon. I included a link to his work at the end of this same thread posted in the Ontario forum.
The job got a bit more colourful after I worked there for a few months. I had already worked part-time security in enough factories to know that the Maintenance Department was always where one went to find hidden ‘treasures’ – and there was a giant cabinet hidden behind a workbench in the corner of the next photo.
10.
Maintenance Gratitude by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
None of the security staff had ever seen the inside of it. An old cardboard box in the security office was filled with over three hundred keys. I didn’t think we’d have the key to the cabinet, but I figured there was a slim chance that the tooth combination on one of the 300 keys would line up correctly enough to pop the lock. Besides, what else did I have to do but stand there on a midnight shift and try out 300 different keys? Sure enough, one of them worked. The cabinet opened to reveal ten years worth of Playboy magazines. From that point forward, after sharing the news with the rest of the security guards, it became a cat-and-mouse game of us taking magazines out and putting them back carefully enough for the maintenance guys not to realize and change the lock.
There was a giant blueprint of the factory hanging in the security office with little penciled-in X’s all over the place. One day I decided to ask Max what the X’s were marking. From that point forward I was invited into a game that the rest of the security staff had been playing for years: they were trying to sleep in every conceivable part of the plant and mark it with an X. Anxious to make my impressive mark, I decided to go for the gold and put an X right on the plant manager’s office, seen here:
11.
JW's Office by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
There was a brown leather couch along the left-hand wall, and I crashed there for the night. That was particularly daring, because the plant manager J.W. used to come in at all random hours to complete paperwork in his spare time.
Not to be outdone by my foolhardiness, Max decided to one-up me. I came in to relieve him at 8 am one morning and he was not in the security office. By 8:20 am, I was beginning to worry, wondering if he had fallen down somewhere in the plant. He finally strolled into the security office at 8:30 am shaking his head. Nobody had put an X on the plant cafeteria, and he decided that there had to be some way to do it. In the far corner of the next photo, there used to be two pop machines. He pulled three cafeteria chairs behind the machines, set them out in a row, stretched out and went to sleep on them. But this wasn’t during plant shutdown. A crew of workers came into the cafeteria at 7:45 am to eat their lunch. He was trapped behind the machines and had to wait them out before emerging and returning to the security office.
12.
Behind The Machines by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
13.
Misplaced by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
14.
Family Values by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
The following room was the laboratory of the plant and was staffed by a team of three chemical engineers. I was always impressed by the apparently high level of research and development that was going on in there. The regular workers, of course, disliked and shunned the engineers because they made twice as much as them and did not participate in the strike line. I didn’t realize it until one night when the power in the plant went out. The workers were all sitting outside at picnic tables waiting for the lights to come back on again. When the head engineer, a Mr. Pospishen, walked out of the plant, the entire working crowd started jeering him, chanting “Popsicle!”
15.
Engineering Lab by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
16.
Popsicle's Office by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
17.
Burn Book by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
He it is!... the next shitty photo was in a pitch-black part of the plant and had to be taken with flash only. But I could not skip it, because this was the security office where I sat bored out of my mind hour after hour for years. The door on the back wall led to a closet where I had actually hooked up a TV and VCR to watch movies. One of the other guards even brought in a Super Nintendo and hooked it up so we could play Mario Kart for a while when we came in to relieve each other. Yes, we were that pathetic.
18.
Security Office (Looking In) by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
Most security guards... all they ever do is smoke! The walls here were so yellow with second-hand nicotine that a temporary guard one weekend decided to bring in a can of grey paint and roll the walls. It was so fresh and new smelling when I came in to relieve him! But then the head maintenance guy came in for his shift at the plant. He immediately grieved the job to the union and was paid 5 hours double-time-and-a-half. The guard was fired.
19.
Security Office (Looking Out) by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
The above photo is the view looking out from behind the security desk. I sat here one night studying for calculus mid-terms and I heard the telltale clicking of nails on the concrete floor walking into the office. I grabbed my textbook and leaned around the corner of the desk, expecting to smash a rat. Instead I was face-to-face with a skunk. I froze in place and sat perfectly still for ten minutes while the skunk rooted through my lunch and poked around the closed confines of the security office. It finally walked out, much to my relief. I can’t believe I escaped unsprayed!
20.
Solo Patrol by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
21.
Eat My Cancer by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
At the back of the plant was the following unused set of upstairs offices that remained locked even to the security staff. Determined to figure out what the big secret was, I made it my mission one shift to ‘break in’ to the very plant that I was guarding. There was a push-button combination pad securing the door with 5 buttons. Lo’ and behold, my high-school Finite skills came in handy: 5X4X3X2X1 = 120 different combinations. I figured if I rattled off 10 combinations a minute, I should be able to break into the office in under 15 minutes. I grabbed paper and a clipboard to keep organized and began… 1234…. 1235…. 1245…. 1345 POP! The door opened. 120 combinations to try and I got it on the 4th try.
22.
Combination Access by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
23.
Upstairs Office by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
The inside offices seen above are actually quite similar to how they looked 21 years ago, minus all of the graffiti. This area of the plant had already been abandoned. Strangely though, there were household belongings piled everywhere. No wonder we were never given access to this area of the plant: the manager was in the process of divorcing his wife and had started to store all of his
personal belongings here for safe keeping. I was all excited to tell the other guards that I finaly got into the upstairs offices, only to discover that I was several months too late. Max had already had another guard boost him up so he could go through the ceiling tiles over top of the door.
On a side note, I rushed upstairs and stood at this very window in 1996 after hearing on the radio that there was a car on fire on the Garden City Skyway. For 45 minutes, I watched the car burning here on the upward slope of the Niagara-bound lanes.
24.
Skyway View by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
25.
Car Fire by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
26.
Towering Giant by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
27.
Particulate Matter by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
28.
Long Term Effects by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
29.
Central Stores by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
30.
Watching Overhead by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
In the end, I started to get way too stupid with this job. I was nearing the end of university and didn’t need a ‘homework job’ any longer, and I started to take risks that, in retrospect, were completely idiotic and reckless. I would come in for my shift, turn all the lights on and leave my vehicle parked out front. My friends would pick me up and we’d go to Gord’s Place nightclub downtown for the night. One time we even drove all the way to Burlington to visit The Kingdom, leaving the plant insecure for probably five hours. I’d use the pay phones to dial in my security code every hour, as this was before Call-Display. I often wonder what would have happened if there was a fire while I was gone, or if the plant was robbed. Truly, truly moronic.
31.
Anthology by
Ground State Photos, on Flickr
I suppose the moral of the story is this: the next time you’re exploring an industrial location and you have an encounter with a security guard and assume you’re going to get charged, think about what you’ve read here. Think about the mentality of security guards and the stupid things they themselves do on the job out of sheer boredom. There are a thousand different ways you can successfully reason with them, because they really and utterly don’t care about the job.
As for Alcan Automotive, it became the typical cliché victim of operational scale-back. The plant has been abandoned for many years, becoming an icon of inner city decay. Two girls got robbed two weeks ago in the parking lot (
http://www.stcatha...d-in-st-catharines) which made me finally decide to visit this place before the city of Saint Catharines makes it disappear for good.
