Sir Aardvark said:
It sounds like this is just a job, not a career.
Does it really matter if you get fired for violating company policy?. Can you get another job quickly enough if you get found out?.
I worked for a very large privately owned family business which was headquartered in the VERY worst part of a VERY bad city for several years. The building was a huge affair that took up the entire city block. Hookers worked the streets in broad daylight, and crawled the pavement like cockroaches after the sun went down. On any given Monday morning, the employee parking lot was littered with used condoms and syringes and fired shell casings. My job required me coming in early and leaving late. Very late. Oft times I would have to let myself out of the building at midnight, several hours after the rest of the folks there had left, and the security guards were seldom anywhere near. I was young, struggling to make ends meet, and this job came along paying twice what my old job did, was in another city, and I was not familiar with it's combat zone reputation when I hired on. Company policy directly forbade the carrying of firearms - I ignored it. This in a state where CCW was years away from becoming a reality. Once inside the building one was secure - it was getting from the building to your car that was an obstacle course of hookers, pushers, and assorted trash. The trannies worked one side of the street, the RG's (real girls) worked the other, and there was constant friction between the two. Gunfire erupted on a regular basis, and knife and razor wounds were common. My office window faced the street, and I was called on one time as a witness to a murder when some fool who obviously was out of his element was attempting to make a drug buy, and had his own pistol taken away from him and used to kill him. I heard the shots that hit four of our truck drivers who had turned down the propositions of hookers who then took exception to their refusals. As I said, a combat zone. My main concern while at work was someone firing a round through a lighted window for fun or on whim. Never happened to my office, but there was more than one window in that building replaced after being pierced by bullets. As stated above, summer or winter, I walked out of that building at night, feeling like a point man in Bagdad with no backup behind me, constantly waiting for "the" confrontation, with a .44 with the hammer back under a jacket. I always figured that if anyone got me, I wanted them to be easily identifiable from the big round .429 caliber hole in their COM. The revolver always came in with me in a breifcase, and left with me under the coat draped over my right arm. Those were truly the most terrifying times I can ever recall. After a few months of this, my boss came into my office, said he knew that what I was doing wasn't safe, looked around, and laid a Rossi .38 on my desk. I slid it back, told him "no thank you" and didn't elaborate. I feel sure he knew why. Three years after I went to work for them, our offices were moved to a more secure location, and the next year all corporate offices were moved after a Senior VP was robbed two steps from the front door at five o'clock on a sunny day.
In retropect, I should have demanded they provide armed escorts to and from my car, or should have told them to shove that job up their...well...you get the idea. Young and hungry for success = rash behavior sometimes. Guess that's why the recruiters want to sign young guys up.
