Can I get an Amen? Ancient Security Guards. Why?

“Can I get an Amen?” is the name of my new “column” that will appear frequently in this blog.  The subject of each essay will fall under the category of “things I cannot stand.”  If they are also things that YOU cannot stand, then I’d like “to get an amen.

Wat up with geriatric security guards?

And I am not talking Clint Eastwood (age 81) who, properly armed, might still scare the beejesus out of a bad guy.  I am talking about esteemed men and women aged 60 – 90, with no visible weapon, except for perhaps their walker.

Recently, I had to go to the courthouse to pay a ticket in cash – the ticket was acquired by my husband, for whom everyone on the road is there specifically to piss him off by getting in his way – and I was greeted by a lovely male and female duo from the early Jurassic period.

They were very nice people.  I mean them no disrespect.  But even THEY know they are old.  No one is fooled by their youthful appearance.  And they are not armed.  They have no special security training, unless you consider beating someone to death with your cane a defense technique.  And this of course would be negated by the prospects of an imminent heart attack.

I remember another time when I was staying in a hotel.  I went to the lobby after midnight and the 50-year-old desk clerk making minimum wage was being “guarded” by a 60-year-old, also making minimum wage.  Both happened to be women.  The “security guard” was not armed.  I checked.

So if someone tried to rob the desk clerk, was the geriatric mall cop going to leap over the counter and pummel the punk to death with her bare fists… all for $7.25 an hour?

I actually asked why she was there, since at the time, I observed only the fact that she was old, unarmed, soft around the middle (aren’t we all), reading the paper and drinking a cup of coffee.  She wasn’t even standing up.  I was told that the hotel hired “security” (I can NOT stop putting that word in parenthesis), after midnight.

REALLY?  If I were the clerk, I would feel no safer, with or without Mrs. Doubtfire.

I remember back in the day, before decreased wages and lowered expectations, when security guards were actually a little fearsome, at least to teenagers.  Today, if I worked somewhere they felt the need to hire security and the Maytag Repairman showed up, I think I would quit.