The sorrow and joys of security work.

I am a security guard who is 'working' as I write this.

Security work offers the opportunity to study, read, daydream, blog or simply sit and think in your employers time. For many people it is a means of preserving their sanity as they recover from divorce, bereavement or catastrophe. Yet it is a trap.

A little free time is good, a lot of free time is a disaster as the attention span shrinks and so, seemingly, does IQ. I have worked on sites where I do not speak to a single human being for days on end. When at last I receive a telephone call I find that I am unable to speak initially with anything more than a neanderthal grunt. Embarrassed, I pretended that I was clearing my throat and recovered five million years of evolution in a few seconds.

The only things preventing it are the attention span issue described earlier and the risk of assuming what people say about security guards is true- that we are naturally thick.

In the British Army they say an infantryman should have an IQ of less than 90 or more than 120. Both groups are immune to boredom. The man of low IQ will not be bored because his mind is more or less fully occupied by the simple tasks presented to him. The man of higher IQ will have a rich internal life that will keep him occupied. It is quite ethical to abscond mentally provided the job is done.

It is also rather 'old money' to treat earning ones living as a minor inconvenience. Ones real efforts should be directed towards making the world better.