When I was eighteen years old I needed to find a job. My prior experience had been managing a headshop for three years, and a few volunteering engagements. I tried the office supply store first but on my first day out of training, we had a morning huddle and were informed that the store was being closed. In efforts to line something up before they transferred me to another location, I was contacted by a retirement home for a night shift security position. The hiring manager was an old Boston guy who used to be a blackjack dealer in Vegas.

So I walk into the guard shack and the guy’s smoking Marlboro reds and tells me, “you can’t let ’em catch you smoking in here.” I found his overall character to be amusing and endearing, so I took the job. Over the course of the next two years, from age 18-19 I would drive a company truck, and a golf cart through this 50-acre property. The shift ran from midnight to 8am which conflicted with my young adult life. Many times, I’d be partying and have to come into work. One of the more notable nights was the night I showed up to work high on heroin. My friend brought it over, he wanted to do like a “first time doing heroin” thing together and I was really into being edgy.

We didn’t plan when we got drugs, we just got them.

And when drugs called me, I answered.

So, I’m high at work. One resident at the retirement home was a known regular night owl and, as usual, she was out and about. Night owling. I’m standing there high as hell trying my best to poker face like a normal person.

I also had to clock in on New Years Eve at Midnight once or twice, in which case I would be drunk. My boss and coworkers understood my proclivity for alcohol and would barter with me using beer for free cleaning or the occasional shift coverage.

My line to often make the torture of sleeping for only a few hours during the day was “Oh yes I have breakfast before I fall asleep and dinner when I wake up!”

I don’t find that amusing at all anymore.

The other quirky thing about this job was when I got to work the daylight savings time shifts. One night a year I left early and one night a year I worked an extra hour. Total mindfuck. I would often simultaneously work a second job, because a job that starts at midnight is a bit difficult to arrive late to.

One of the jobs I worked in the meantime of holding this night shift security job was a different security job at a call center. People would drive up to a gated community and we, in our central station, would answer the call and verify their entry. This was the first time in my life I ever drank on the job.

Beforehand it seemed so taboo, so scandalous, but after sitting in that drab office chair reciting “may I have the name and address of the person you’re visiting” ad nauseum over a shift of ten hours, I no longer saw the harm.

Because my name is a unisex name, some of my coworkers would see me in the group chat rooms and DM me thinking I was a woman and, of course, when they found out I wasn’t, would ghost me. Even if I actually needed their input on a work thing. They could not live with the embarrassment.

Drinking was not the only way I amused myself at this job. I would deliberately spell common words wrong when inputting visitors in their system. I spelled Papa John’s wrong so many times that somebody went into the group chat and blew up the public feed, “WHO DOESN’T KNOW WHAT PAPA JOHNS IS!? THIS IS RIDICULOUS!” Meanwhile I’m snickering and laughing with the other ne’er-do-wells beside me in our cubicles. I think the most heinous thing I did during this job was one time the bathroom was closed for cleaning and I went in anyway and the cleaning lady saw my dick. She laughed it off, she was a little wacky, but that one still seemed a bit much even for me. I quit that job because no 19 year old should be working in a call center no matter how nice the pay is.

Oh yeah another thing, we had to have badges to get in the building and one day I left my badge at my desk and also left the building. This guy I knew who worked there refused to let me use his badge to get in, or to swipe me in with his badge. “One badge. One entry.” He said. The same guy, gave me $200 to get him a sheet of acid on one of our lunch breaks once. After the one badge one entry thing I was like no, I’m done. No more favors for you buddy.

Oh yeah, my friend got me this job and there was one time where she sold me some Xanax in the parking lot but it was like a scene from a movie. I pull in real slow and she slows down coming the other way and we both roll our windows down, and without stopping we swap the pills and the money like it’s nothing. Classic.

There was also another time where I showed up high on some extended release oxycontin and I ended up throwing up in the bathroom. No cleaning lady that time.

Despite my hijinks, I remained employed at both jobs. I eventually quit the call center but the retirement home I stayed at that job up until I left Florida. I did not work a night shift security job until four years later.

I had relocated to an Appalachian town known for its college football team. I was attending college and I needed a second job, because the first job I was working was not paying enough. Somehow a blast from the past hit me and I looked up night shift security jobs and found one where the job was to babysit an empty parking lot for $15/hour. The truth was, the job was a construction site where a pedestrian had recently fallen to their death. The company was in a bind to hire security, and I was at the right place at the right time. The first three months of this job, I did not have a car. I was hired in December and I watched this parking lot while freezing my ass off. I was wearing layers on layers, I brought a heater out, I would even crawl in the bulldozers and hope for warmth (there wasn’t any).

What eventually happened was, I started drinking on the job again to not feel so cold. Then I befriended some local alcoholics at the gas station who would eventually let me crash in their apartment on occasion.

This continued until the temperature went below ten degrees. Then I experimented with the idea of “leaving early.” This job was unsupervised. I texted to clock in, I texted to clock out. I still have not met the man who employed me in person. I don’t think I ever will.

Midway through that job, I got a car and I started staying the whole time again, but I would also drink. Not as much, but still, enough.

Most of the homeless guys that I had to kick out wanted to drink with me. Any college student I had to kick out would see I had beer on me, and I totally lost credibility.

It was at this point that the construction company installed cameras in the lot, and told us that they were going with the cameras because cameras are a cheaper option. I was furloughed.

Another two months go by, and I get a call from that employer asking if I wanted to be relocated to working at three different hotels over the span of 4 days. 2 days at one property, 2 days at a property across the street, and 1 night at a property across town.

This is why I decided to write the security job section of this novel. Working night shift security at three hotels owned by a company that rhymes with Milton was some of the wildest shit I have ever encountered.

My first night on the job: The woman who works night shift front desk weighs let’s say 280lbs and has one leg. She’s my age, and she lives out of her car. For the whole night she’s regaling me about her bisexual adventures, and how she’s got one girlfriend currently under psychiatric observation that she’s bringing food to, but she’s also got a sugar daddy on the side. Two weeks from that conversation she had a threesome with two of the cleaning staff, and then she quit and moved to a different hotel. I don’t remember her name, but I’ll never forget her as a coworker because that was impressive. She would often be vaping weed during her shift and when the bartender got off of her shift they’d hang out on the patio and smoke cigarettes, so I’d join them on occasion if I wasn’t too drunk. One time I showed up to work so drunk that I clocked in, walked back to my car and the next thing I knew it was 6am and time to go.

Well when my one footed coworker left she warned us that they were re-hiring somebody who quit before he got fired (a move I am all too familiar with). In story, the guy sounded like a nightmare, but I really didn’t put two and two together until the guy worked his first day. This guy was in his 40s, divorced, and 100% addicted to pain pills. Like he would just follow me around all night rambling.

One night he told me he was going to steal liquor from the kitchen and he told me how he was going to do it. I texted my boss and he replied with “Maybe he’s joking” It’s not our job to police the staff so… I didn’t really know how or what to do it but it freaked me out because what if he steals that shit and blames me?

My final straw with him was the morning I walked in and he was going through withdrawals. He was covered in sweat and he’s swaying back and forth, and he’s coming closer and closer to me saying “please don’t tell my boss. Please don’t tell anyone.” I told him he was making me uncomfortable and to get the fuck away from me. I did take a video of some of that and forward it to his boss, but there was no action taken.

The guy who worked front desk on the other days wasn’t much of a reprieve. Nice fellow, but he cornered me and asked me if I was willing to marry his wife for citizenship. I genuinely considered it, but had to turn him down. 

The other hotel property I worked at had a different vibe entirely.

Besides one of the front desk guys who went on vacation without notifying management and got caught trashing his hotel room where he left needles in the room (I call him Kevin Needles), the staff at this hotel was pretty tame. The breakfast lady bought some weed off of me once and the AGM was a snarky gay dude who was really into Ratchet and Clank, so I got along fine with the staff.

The guests are where things got shaky at this job.

One day this lady comes in and has me print off 200 pages of Facebook posts because she had to go to court the next day over her house. I’m a fucking security guard. I was helping them, but I was vocally not happy about it. I was like “yeah yknow you old people kill me. You see one young guy and go, ‘oh sure he knows computers.’”

The whole process took almost two hours.

I befriended them afterwards, because one of the ladies stayed there every month. Best to keep the regulars happy. She would always find new ways to hold me hostage. One night she brought her son with her and he was the biggest Florida Gators fan you’d ever meet. This man is 50 years old and he’s going on for hours about the Jeep Rubicon and the engine being made out of aluminum for a certain year, and how our state’s football fans blew up his car and fight him for being an obnoxious Gators fan. Real Good ol’ boy.

One night there was this skinny dude who talked like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers but with a Kentucky accent. This dude chatted my ear off about trucking and then invited me back up to his room.

He had a 30 rack of Michelob Ultra and an 8 ball of cocaine that he was doing with his wife and his daughter.

So there I was, coke falling out of my nose having a night in with the family. But this was where the self-awareness kicked in. This isn’t security, and I’d have been fired under any other circumstances.

On my last night at this hotel, I cooked a pizza in the breakfast oven and set off the fire alarm. The whole hotel was evacuated. That still did not get me fired, just banned from this hotel.

The third hotel property, there was a bachelor party.

These weed guys.

They were guys in the weed industry.

One of them wanted to shotgun a beer with me and I said, “Hell Yeah!” The front desk guy was like “go outside. I am not having that come down on me.” We comply, and I shot gunned the beer. Then some other guy came down and called us fools which pissed off the front desk guy.

We received several noise complaints about them and had to go up to their room only to find dog shit all over the floor. We removed one of the drunk guys and kept him downstairs with us to end the yelling match. This drunk man began going on about how attractive dolphins are and how dolphins like humans can be gay.

This man said, “unfortunately, I’m not gay” and both me and the front desk guy were like what the fuck? He then proceeded to lecture us about ‘the egg’ by Andy Weir.

One night I swam in the pool, and the GM saw it on camera but they weren’t sure who it was or who was on shift that let me do that. The front desk guy did not snitch- he’s a real one.

I often would leave early(out of habit) but one of the front desk people that wasn’t the real one, ratted me out.

The pizza situation really put my night shift security job in the shitter and it led to me getting furloughed again.

But still not fired!

Two months later, I get a call from that employer and he said “How would you like your old job back?” Turns out the cameras that the construction company thought were a good idea were not a good idea. Some odd ten thousand dollars worth of equipment was stolen from the site and they needed somebody bad.

Guess who came back?

At this point in time, however, I was just not showing up for work. I’d start the shift, or maybe show up late, but I’d circle the block, and go about my business.

Sometimes I’d be at the gym, sometimes at an AA meeting, one night I had a gig less than one block away from the construction site. I also had a gig one night at one of the hotels that I lied and called in late, because I prioritized my passions over this stupid job.

Needless to say, I never got fired nor was I properly caught. I quit via text, and did not show up for a shift.

I have not looked back. Upon review of this narrative, I’m a bit of the villain in these stories.

A thief. A liar. A miscreant.

But I don’t believe that I’m the only one.

By law of averages alone, there have to be more. Think of how many like- minded people I met during these stories.

As a society, are we to accept supporting the lifestyles of selfish depravity under no other construct than trust that we will take our jobs seriously? Were there times in which I did some good during these jobs? Yes. There’s good in the worst of us and bad in the best of us.