Reception
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2008-09-01 18:02:39 - Graham EllisThe slight young girl, perhaps aged about 17, was dressed in army fatigues. She waved her automatic rifle at me and ordered me to move away from my car. I did as ordered, without any hesitation. An hour or so later, I was in a prison building ...
I'm never quite sure what I'm going to find when I turn up to run a course.
The day above - at a US military base in Germany - sticks out, years after it happened, as the most memorable of all time. More usually, I'll arrive on site to a pre-informed reception, and a customer contact who's anxious to get me and all the equipment I have with me in, and set up, for a course to start within the hour. With a pre-checked set of equipment, and reasonable access to the training room, that timing is plenty.
My German experience came flooding back to me this morning. A security guard who I've never met before at this customer site, a failure of the notification system that should have let him know that I would be arriving before any of the staff and he should let me in, and I found myself spending much of my setup hour sitting, sipping coffee and listening to stories from the security industry. Nice guy, just doing his job - and I've long since to take such things very laid back - as I said to him "I'm being paid for my day here, and it doesn't really make much difference to me if I spend an extra half an hour chatting with you, then run a slightly shorter training day".