For What it is Worth (Pt. 2)
[Continued from Pt. 1]
I do this because our landlady decided to define terms to me and what they mean; correcting me, she said something like, “No, no—We do not have security guards here; they do not carry guns; they are Courtesy Officers, because they do not carry weapons or attack.” With no offense to our landlady and her—for lack of a better word—circumventive title for our guard, let’s look into what Webster’s has to say about these words and what they mean. Webster’s Dictionary defines courtesy as: Urbanity; complaisance; act of kindness or civility. Let’s consider this definition, since it has words that we may not commonly use such as urbanity and complaisance. Because I do not want to tire you with an endless list of definitions, I will paraphrase these as one of them, namely complaisance has gained lately a negative connotation. Webster’s says that complaisance means in a soft or kind manner, which of course, is our correct definition for courtesy. Urbanity, although it contains the word urban, does not mean city-dwelling; in fact, Webster’s defines it as politeness. So, in the definition of our first word, courtesy, we have a word that means soft politeness, having kindness and civility. Now, we turn to our second word: Officer. Webster’s defines officer as “A person invested with an office [office being a special duty]” Now, if we put two and two together, as they say, or in this case—one and one—we have this definition for a Courtesy Officer: A person invested with the special duty of being kind and civil. Now that we have defined a Courtesy Officer as this, not, as our Landlady has defined it—she defines it as a person not carrying or using a deadly firearm—there is a better word for that, and I offer this better term as my research into the complex meanings of words has led me to it: An Unarmed Officer. That is what she defined. Of course, she may have thought to call him an Urbanity Officer and skipped a few words back and wrote down the definition of Unarmed Officer in its place (After all, they do both begin with the letter U.), but I offer a much more plausible explanation: This is the circumventive empty rhetoric that people use in order to avoid the truth of a given situation. A word only has meaning when its meaning is practiced or attributed to it through action or being. This man is not a courtesy officer. It is not courteous to leave friends of residents out in the cold—out in the dark—without making a simple courtesy call for them. It is not courteous to treat someone, without any proof or evidence, that you should serve and assist as a criminal and then to deny them a chance to provide that proof. It is not courteous, not urbane, to breed violence and anger within the people concerning the apartment complex that you protect—And this is exactly what I saw this individual do, a few days prior to the incident above.
Some fellows were visiting, probably to help some friend with a task, perhaps to pick up some friends. The guard (no longer can I call him security or courteous), stood there and watched, waiting, not to assist, but to pounce, to command these young men, to tell them what they can and cannot do. He waited with enthusiasm. It was around nine or ten at night, and, of course, the “future residents” spaces were all empty and useless. These fellows, doing what was expected of them, explained to him that they had to be in and out, asking, indicating that they needed to park there for five to ten minutes. Disregarding the fact that these guys went out of their way to give him information about themselves, to state their purpose, and to assure him that they wouldn’t hold the space long, he said, “You’re not allowed to park there; you’re going to have to move,” taking a tone of command, not of a guard, but of a moody police officer telling a drunk man to put his hands on the wall so he can search him and take him in to the station. These guys could have tried to sneak in, but they did the right thing—and he punished them for it. Why? Because he could—because this fellow is looking for people that he can command and restrict in the name of policy—but, again, that’s not the heart of the matter; the heart of the matter is this: Those guys, rightly so, got angry—But they got too angry. I saw the change come over them in their eyes, and in their posture. I could read them like a book; they wanted to attack the guard. Of course, they have no right to do so; physical violence should only be practiced in defense—but this is my moral, my ethical view. Not everyone is going to resist the urge to be violent against someone who both inconveniences them and does it with an attitude, especially three nineteen year old guys—full of hormonal activity, and already having to come to terms with enough imposing authority figures in their lives. Whether he knows it or not (he apparently does not) these guys were considering jumping him—and they could have. He was outnumbered, except for one thing—I was there. I stood around for a second, pretending to make conversation with the guard to make sure that these guys held their peace. While I have my issues, I do not want to see anyone attacked and harmed, even if they bring it upon themselves because they lack anything resembling common sense in the way they treat others. Those guys had violence on their minds; it pervaded their beings. Why?—Because we have a guard who nurtures that violence, who aggravates people, almost as if he hopes to bring it out of them. This is not security; breeding violence in others, in outsiders, is not security. Having someone else’s angry guests board an elevator with me, looking for a way to lash out does not make me feel any more secure. Again, because of his bullying, our guard acts to accomplish the opposite of his duty.
Of course, you could say, “Come on [Writer], I mean—He was upholding policy, right?” And of course, you would be absolutely right. He was upholding policy, but let me pose this: How was he upholding policy. I’ll tell you how: with an attitude. And innocent people do not deserve to be treated with an attitude, especially when they seek out the guard to explain a special situation.
But policy must always be followed, right? Wrong. There are exceptions to every rule, and the best security guard (or courtesy officer) must be versatile and ready to respond to the unexpected; and that may involve prioritizing common sense over policy. We have a man masquerading as an automaton, who acts as if all he can possibly do is follow policy. We must recognize that no policy made by people can possibly cover every given situation, and more importantly, we must not allow people like this man to use those rigid policies as an excuse to exercise power over anyone else. Let’s break down this situation, and let’s make the argument from the view of one following the policy:
First, why does the policy exist, the policy that individuals cannot park in the future residents’ spaces? It exists because we cannot have everyone parking there without permission; if we let one person do it, others will too, and before you know it, the spaces are filled every night with cars. Ok, that’s valid. Now, let’s break it down to show why it does not apply to this special situation. First, these guys asked permission, explaining why they needed to park there and that it would be temporary. That takes care of the part of the policy where everyone is parking there. If someone parks there without asking permission, they can be towed. When someone asks permission to do something, he does it because he is already aware that it is not following policy, and that his special case may take priority over a certain policy. Also, the policy itself is overly rigid, and therefore oppressive. It serves no purpose at ten o’clock at night. There are no potential residents coming in at ten o’clock at night wanting to discuss moving in to Cornell Arms, and even if there was, our Landlady wouldn’t be there to discuss it with them. The spaces are useless and empty. They just sit there empty—But they could serve a productive purpose at night, and this is another point on improving security: They could be late night guest spaces, only in use from Nine p.m. through Six a.m. mainly for the use of women who are often targeted for rape, robbery, and worse when walking long distances across dark parking lots. Shortening the distance that handicapped people and people who are for any reason vulnerable to attack minimizes the chance that they will be attacked. Cornell Arms’ policy does not provide this when it, in fact, could. After having attended many seminars on women’s self defense, I have learned that one of the most important things that women can do to minimize attack is to avoid walking long distances alone through the dark. On the legal level, this is a bad policy, because if a young woman was attacked trying to enter Cornell Arms because she couldn’t obtain a close, well-lit parking space, then she could have grounds to sue Cornell Arms because it failed to provide any kind of guest parking. Of course, at this point, our guard would argue that there are metered spaces across the street from the front door. While this is true, they are often closed for parking because of meetings held at the State House. Before I was able to rent a parking space in the parking lot, I often could not find a close parking space, and I often found myself walking beneath dark trees, around dark, threatening corners, or through shadowed parking lots, all places where a mugger or a rapist could hide. I was happy for one thing—that I am six feet tall, one hundred and eighty five pounds and well-trained in hand-to-hand combat; but still, I didn’t feel safe, and I never had the impression that Cornell Arms did anything to make me feel safer about the situation. I was happy that I was a male, and that large males are targeted less than females. Of course, I followed all of the rules to make myself more secure, such as constantly surveying my surroundings, walking quickly and confidently, and maintaining straight posture, all things which deter criminals and make you less likely to be attacked unaware. The point is that I had to depend upon my own security; this guard was not always there to look out for me if I needed it. The system that supposedly protects me threatened me as it does not provide close parking spaces for guests or for residents who do not have a parking space; it threatened me because it forced me to walk a long distance, around corners, through the dark. If we had late night parking spaces, just a few, then we could say that Cornell Arms is making some kind of effort at maximizing the security of all of its residents and guests. But of course, we do not; instead, we have an arbitrary, oppressive, and, worst of all, counter-productive policy, which our aggressive guard protects while failing all the while to protect residents and guests. Since I have, out of necessity, turned to attacking the policy that our oppressive anti-door-man stands upon, let us again turn to Webster’s Dictionary to define this word, policy.
Webster’s Dictionary defines policy as “a selected, planned line of conduct in the light of which individual decisions are made and coordination achieved.” Several things about this definition interest me. The first word that strikes my attention is coordination, the state of having brought “the parts or agents of a plan, process etc. into a common whole”. So, what is the “common whole” of a security policy?—Security, of course! So an effective (a word I will insert into our definition) security policy would be one that brings together “the parts or agents of [an effective security] plan, process, etc into a common [and effective] whole.” If this defines good security policy, then all of the rules that compose that policy should unify into one over-arching purpose: to provide the most effective security for residents and their guests. If any part of that policy is counter-productive to that over-arching purpose, then it does not unify with the other measures of the security policy, and the person in charge of deciding policy should remove it; otherwise it is not only bad policy—It is not, according to Webster, policy at all. Our guard must make certain before he spouts rhetoric about following policy, that he knows and understands what his favorite pet word means. I suggest that the policy-makers of this institution—No—of my home, reevaluate their supposed policies, which, in fact, may be non-policies, non-policies that, as I have shown above, not only fail to provide security, but actually make me and my guests less secure and less safe, non-policies that are not only ineffective, but diametrically opposed to the whole of our security policy.
I would like to relate another incident, an incident in which our guard was discourteous to a resident, namely me. When we first moved here about a year ago, we were trying to get our telephone line operational. I had no mobile phone from which I could call, so I assumed that the guard, who I had introduced myself to already, would certainly let me, a paying resident of these apartments, use the lobby phone. I assumed wrong. First he lied, saying that there was no lobby phone—of course, I was always told that “Honesty is the best policy,” which is apparently not in his policy book. I knew that there was a lobby phone, because the other guard the night before (a fine guard and a good man, I might add) allowed me to use the phone regarding the same matter of calling the phone company. I called his lie out, saying, “Oh, really, I used one last night; did you get rid of it between yesterday and today?” He looked at me blankly, not knowing how to respond to me catching him in his lie. Finally, he thought of something to say, “Well, we do have a phone, but it is locked up and I can’t let you use it.” I asked him why I couldn’t use it and he responded, subtly smugly that it is policy. I asked him why he lied to me; I asked him if that was good policy; he didn’t respond to my question, instead going into his stormtrooper mode and proceeding to try to tell me what to do. I told him that I would tell the landlady of his deceit and his lacking common sense in his duties. He decided that some kind of logical explanation was in order at my offer to exercise my consumer rights, so this was his logic: The phone could be stolen. I asked him how I could steal the phone when it was right under his nose and plugged into the wall on his side of the counter. He responded that it was a policy, that he couldn’t watch me talk on the phone while he did his rounds. I asked him why he couldn’t give me five minutes to call before he did his rounds, and he said that it was not his obligation to do so under policy. One interesting thing to note, I might add, is that after I returned to my apartment, I did not see him walk around the building for another thirty minutes. Again, this man lied in order to make an excuse to oppress a resident, to show me, since I had just moved in, that he had authority over me. Oh, and he did tell me, like he told my friend the other day: “There’s a payphone right outside.”
I would pose this question: Why should I, a paying resident of this apartment complex, be forced to spend money on a pay phone while I am in my apartment building?—There is no cogent, logical answer, because the entire situation was ludicrous. The man even offered me the money for the payphone if I didn’t have it, showing me that he could help, but that it would be on his terms and under his control, and not what I requested. For him to maintain psychological control and oppression, he refused to do what I had politely asked him to do—in fact, offering to do something that would even waste more of his time: He offered to look up BellSouth’s quick call number so I wouldn’t have to continue to pour quarters into the payphone while on hold. Now, for him to do that would take more time and more effort than to let me use the phone, and if he let me use the lobby phone, he could have gotten out to his patrol of the grounds in less time. Also, as he did with my friend, he jeopardized my security by telling me to go out and call from a payphone beside the dark, shadowed alley. Again I ask: Is this courtesy? Is this security? No, it’s discourtesy, it’s hindrance of another person because of some insecurity within himself—And worse, it’s endangering the life of a resident.
But I let it go. I did not complain to the landlady. I decided that I was new to the apartments and that it would be better for me to let the matter go. And so I did. But now, after having given this man the benefit of the doubt time and time again, he continues to oppress my fellow residents and my guests. Through oppressing my guests, he insults me and he oppresses me in my own home, and I will not have this continue. I apologize for bringing to your attention the old hatchet that I had tried to bury, but this man has unburied it and used it against all of my guests.
Also, relating to this, this guard once told me, “You cannot impeach my integrity.” He repeated it twice, as if he was trying to brainwash me into belief. I didn’t respond then. I will now. I would say to this man, “Sir, I do impeach your integrity.” Webster’s Dictionary defines integrity as “moral soundness” or “probity,” probity, by the way, being defined in the same dictionary as “scrupulous honesty”. This leads me to pose this question, a question which does successfully impeach this man’s integrity: Is it scrupulously honest to lie? The answer is, of course, no, which leads me to my next question: Aren’t lying and integrity diametrically opposed terms? The answer is yes, they are diametrically opposed. This man lied to me the first time that I ever asked for his help, not once, but twice. He lied—and his own action of lying “impeaches [his] integrity”. He could respond that he didn’t mean integrity in the above sense of the word, for there are two basic definitions of the word. I will “impeach [his] integrity” in this sense as well. The other definition out of the same dictionary is: “Wholeness, completeness; the quality or state of being unimpaired.” This man’s logic for not letting me use the lobby phone is not, for reasons stated above, whole and complete. His own oppressive policy, his solution to my problem as he tried to avoid mine at all costs, would impair him in his patrol duties much more than if he simply allowed me to use the phone. This man wasted ten minutes of his own time arguing a useless point with me, valuable time which he could use to better secure the property and protect its inhabitants. In the second sense of the word, our guard, both incomplete in his argument and impaired in his duty due to his own inefficient methods of serving residents and wasting their time and his as well. Now that I have, indeed, impeached this man’s integrity, let’s look at some other instances of people making poor arguments in defense of ineffective, useless policy and oppressive actions.
[Continued in Pt. 3]