Night Guard

I graduated from high school without much of a plan for the rest of my life. It was enough for me that I was done with teachers, some of them only four or five years older than me, telling me what to do and how to do it. I was tired of writing papers about things I didn't care about and I was tired of calculating how long the third side of a triangle was.

It wasn't that the schoolwork was more than I could handle because I'd made good grades in all of my classes. I just couldn't see how knowing how to do those things would help me through life. I didn't know what I was going to be, but I knew I wasn't going to be an engineer or a scientist and I sure as hell wasn't going to be a writer.

My parents weren't the type to keep supporting me financially. They made that very clear the day after my graduation party. Dad walked up to me when I was lying on the couch and watching TV.

"Marty, you need to make some decisions now. Your mother and I will let you keep living here, but we're not going to support you like we have in the past. You said you don't have any interest in any more school, so you need to find a job."

I started looking the next day and I found out there were a lot of places looking for people. The only problem was they all wanted either a couple years experience doing a similar job or some sort of higher education like either an associate's degree from a junior college or a four year degree from an actual college.

I did find a job washing dishes and pots and pans for a restaurant. It paid minimum wage and they'd only let me work about thirty hours a week. That way they didn't have to give me any benefits. I did work forty hours a few times when somebody called in sick, but never more than that so I didn't get paid overtime.

The other problem with my job was the schedule changed every week. One week I'd work Monday from noon through Wednesday and the next it would be Saturday through Monday. The week after that might be Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday. There was no way I could plan because the next week's schedule wasn't posted until Wednesday of the week before.

I was watching television one afternoon when I was off and a recruitment ad for the US Army came on. I hadn't thought about the Army because Dad had been in the Army and said it wasn't much fun. When I thought about it that day, I could understand why. Dad was an insurance agent who sat at a desk all day long. He didn't do any more outside than he absolutely had to.

I was pretty much the opposite. I liked camping and hiking. When I thought about it some more, that's exactly what the Army guys did in the commercial except they were carrying guns. The only shooting I'd ever done was at Boy Scout Camp, but I liked it and had always wanted to do more.

The next day I was off, I drove down to the Army Recruiting Office to see what they had to say.

What the recruiting sergeant said sounded great to me. I'd go through eight weeks of basic training and then another eleven weeks of training specific to the infantry. After that, I'd be assigned to an existing infantry unit.

He didn't say anything about any other type of military job, so I asked him if there weren't other jobs. He nodded.

"Sure, but if you want to be real Army, the real Army that defends our country and way of life, you want to go infantry. When the shit hits the fan, the President of the United States doesn't call up the cooks or the motor pool or the clerks. He calls up the infantry because he knows they'll get the job done.

"You'll be promoted faster in the infantry than in any other job and you'll see more of the world. Those other guys, the cooks and motor pool, their job is to keep the infantry fed and to give them vehicles to carry them around. I'll tell you, I went infantry and got my buck sergeant stripes after a year and eight months. Two years later, I was a staff sergeant and leading a combat platoon. The guys in the mess hall and motor pool are lucky if they make buck sergeant by the time their four-year enlistment is up.

"The infantry also trains you to be a leader, and when you get out, who will companies want to hire -- some guy who knows how to peel potatoes, change a tire, or type out a letter, or a man who has demonstrated his ability to lead other men and accomplish the goal?"

Well, all that sounded good to me, or at least it wouldn't be as bad as washing dishes for minimum wage. I signed up right then and there. Two weeks later, I'd passed the physical and was on a bus from the airport in Philadelphia to Fort Dix, New Jersey with a bunch of other guys.

That bus trip was the start of my twenty-year career in the US Army. I did think about getting out several times. My first tour in Vietnam would have been enough all by itself if it hadn't been for two things.

I'd been promoted to Buck Sergeant while I was in Vietnam, and when I left Vietnam I went to Fort Bliss to go through the Advanced Leader Course. Once I finished the course, I'd be on the promotion list for Staff Sergeant and that would mean an increase in pay that I couldn't ignore. I wouldn't be making a lot of money but the Army furnished me a place to live and three meals a day. When I compared my pay of about thirty-eight hundred a year to the average US wages of a little over six thousand, I figured I was about breaking even.

The second was that the world seemed to have calmed down as far as needing the regular infantry was concerned. Vietnam was winding down so it was unlikely I'd be assigned there for a second tour. Once I graduated, the Army would send me wherever it wanted and the Army had a lot of duty stations that didn't seem like they'd be all that great. If I re-enlisted, I'd have some choice in where I went. Germany, Okinawa, and Hawaii seemed like great places to spend my normal Monday through Saturday morning workweek and then have the rest of the weekend to do whatever I wanted.

The result was that I re-enlisted for four more years and specified that I wanted duty in Germany.

The year my second enlistment was up, I'd spent two years in Germany, a year at Fort Dix as a drill instructor, and was currently in Okinawa. It was then I had to make another decision.

By then, I was starting to have some thoughts about what I'd do if I got out, and when I talked to our recruiting sergeant, he didn't paint a very pretty picture.

"Marty, you're on the promotion list for E-7 so if you stay in the Army, you'll be in charge of the enlisted men in a company through a sergeant or staff sergeant in each platoon. That's a great job to have because you're more administrator than anything else. You're young enough you still have a good chance of making E-8 before you get out and that's an even better job. You won't go to formations or drill. You'll be in an orderly room telling a few clerks and lieutenants what they should be doing.

"I'm not telling you this to get a box checked on my evaluation. We've known each other for quite a while and I wouldn't do that to a friend. What I'm telling you is what made me decide to stay in.

"The prospects if you get out are pretty good if you can find the right job, but that's the problem, finding the right job. Most companies like people who've been in command positions like you and I, but they want some other skills to go along with that ability. Twenty years in the infantry won't get you anything. What you'll have to do is start at the bottom and work your way up. What the department of labor says is that will take you another ten years or so.

"The real situation is you've spent eight years and worked yourself up to a pretty nice job in the Army. You make about half as much as a civilian, but you don't pay for housing or meals, and any healthcare you need is free. Those expenses quickly wipe away the difference in income, plus, you have a pretty nice retirement coming if you stay in. If you stay in for twenty years, you'll retire at forty percent of your last monthly pay for life plus Social Security and you'll keep your free health care."

Well what he said made sense to me, so I re-enlisted and kept re-enlisting until I'd put in my twenty years. I was an E-8 by then and though the retirement calculations had changed some, I'd still retire at a rate of almost nineteen hundred dollars a month. That meant I probably wouldn't have to find much of a job to live pretty comfortably. I'd also drawn combat pay during a few assignments and I'd put most of it in savings.

I turned thirty-nine a month before I signed the final papers and formally retired. After I packed up everything in my car, I drove back home. I intended to retire there because Mom and Dad were getting old enough they needed some help sometimes. I stayed with them until I found a job, and then got my own apartment.

Before I retired, I had to go through some training that was supposed to prepare me for civilian life. During that training, we learned about what types of jobs we should look for. The instructor said senior NCO's might find work as guards at a US Embassy somewhere, but I already knew that. It was a practice called "double-dipping" because once you got one of those jobs, you started earning a second retirement. You could actually retire twice, your social security benefits would be higher and you'd still have free healthcare.

I'd thought about that, but since my parents were getting on in years, I figured I'd just stay in the town where I grew up. I applied at every factory within a half-hour's drive and got an interview with about half of them.

It was like the recruiter had said. They'd hire me at an entry-level position, but assured me that I'd likely rise quickly because of my military experience. When I looked at the jobs I'd likely be doing though, they didn't appeal to me. I couldn't see myself driving the same three screws into the same two parts at a rate of one assembly a minute for eight solid hours minus breaks and lunch.

When I was walking out of one plant, I passed by the guard station and the idea struck me that maybe being a guard was something I'd like if I could do it and stil stay close to Mom and Dad. After all, I'd done a lot of guarding in the Army. I stopped and asked the man behind the window if his company was hiring. He just laughed.

"They're hiring all the time. Young guys take the job but they don't like wearing a uniform every day and just sitting and waiting for something to happen that never happens. It only takes a couple months before they get bored enough to quit."

The next day I put in applications at four different guard services, and two days later I got an interview with one. The interview lasted all of five minutes. All the guy wanted to know was what I'd done in the Army and two references he could call. A week after that, I was a bonded guard for Security Systems, Inc. I worked the second shift from three to eleven thirty at Wendel Industries, a company that made wiring harnesses for several major appliance makers.

The guard I'd talked to was right about the job of being a security guard. Mostly it was just sitting there in a chair, watching the display of some video cameras in the warehouse, parking lot, and entrances on a split screen display, and asking for identification for anyone who didn't have a badge to swipe to open the door into the plant.

Every hour I had to make a walk around the plant and swipe my own badge in badge readers distributed around the plant. When I swiped my badge, the reader sent my badge number and the time to a central data system. I had a specific window of time in which to make each check.

The reason for the checks was twofold. The first was obviously so the company would know I was there and doing my job. The second reason was to establish a time frame should something happen like a fire or a break-in. Some of the areas didn't have many people in them, so I was also checking for people who were there when they shouldn't have been.

As I'd found in the Army though, any job is what you make of it, and I found there were some pretty good things about being a security guard.

Most of the jobs in the plant involved stringing different colored wires over and around pegs on boards to make up a wire harness, wrapping the wires with tape or a plastic cover, and then staking on terminals or adding connectors on each end of the wires. None of those jobs required much in the way of strength, but did require a lot of manual dexterity.

Industry had found out during World War II that female employees were faster than male employees at jobs requiring manual dexterity. For that reason, a lot of the employees of Wendel Industries were women. A lot of those women were single as well, and since I wasn't married, it was like being at a woman buffet. There were a lot of women to chose from and I tried to get to know them all.

My shift was a great time to do that. I started work at three in the afternoon, and was in the guard office when the first shift clocked out. That wasn't all that great because the first shift tended to be the people who had worked there the longest and were therefore the oldest. There were a few younger women who looked like they'd be fun, but they were all wearing wedding rings.

The second shift and third shift crews were a different story. Third shift started at eleven and ran until seven the next morning. The people who worked third shift were there because they wanted that shift. Most of the women were married and they wanted that shift for a variety of reasons, but most had to do with the fact that they still had kids living at home. The husband would get the kids up for school and then leave for work as soon as his wife got home. She'd get them to school and then go to bed. By the time the kids came home from school, she was up. When her husband got home from his first shift job, they'd have dinner as a family. The husband would put the kids to bed when she left for work. With that system, they didn't need to pay for daycare or for a babysitter.

Second shift was considered the worst shift to work, and that was because if you worked second shift, you basically had no social life. You started work at three in the afternoon and clocked out at eleven, so going out on Friday night was pretty much out of the question. If the plant had to work on Saturday, that killed Saturday night too.

For that reason, most second shift employees were the youngest seniority people in the plant. The ages ranged from just out of high school to what I guessed was maybe forty.

There was another difference between first shift and the other two shifts as well. First shift was when all the managers were in the plant so people came to work, did their jobs, and then went home. There were also a lot of politics involved because most of the supervisors were hired from the ranks of the most senior hourly employees and there was a lot of lobbying for the next supervisor's job going on.

On the second and third shifts, there were no mangers in the plant to check on anybody, so the employees did their jobs in the way they considered most efficient and the least tiring. They also didn't have to be concerned about anybody looking over their shoulder to see if anything was going on that shouldn't have been. The supervisors were the same way. If their employees were making their production goals, they didn't interfere much.

Of the three shifts, there were more single women on second, and since I was there for the entire shift, I got to know them pretty well. Some, I got to know through the video camera that watched the parking lot.

Suzie Murrel was a really nice looking girl about twenty-five who had all the guys in the plant walking around with their tongues hanging out. It was easy to see why.

Suzie was taller than most women because she had really long, slender legs. She also had pretty nice breasts, not huge, but pretty perky looking. She seemed to know that because her work clothes consisted of a tank top that was cut so low if she bent over you could see her bra, and jeans that I didn't know how she got on unless she greased her legs and ass first.

The first night I was on the job, Suzie was one of the last employees out of the plant and with nothing else to do, I followed her with the parking lot camera as she left the plant. It was the only camera that had remote control for positioning and zooming in.

She'd parked her car at the far end of the lot and that wasn't unusual because the first shift usually took up all the spaces closest to the plant. What wasn't usual to me at the time was there was a guy waiting beside her car when she got there. I recognized the guy as one of the maintenance men.

When Suzie walked up to him, she put her arms around his neck and they kissed. Then, they got into the back seat of Suzie's car.

The windshield was reflecting the lights in the parking lot so I couldn't see through it, but it wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. Suzie's car started rocking about five minutes after they got in, and it rocked for about ten more minutes before it stopped.

When they both got out of the back seat, Suzie gave the guy a big kiss then, and he walked off to his pickup truck. Suzie got into the driver's seat of her car and followed him out of the parking lot. I watched Suzie every night after that and it was always the same guy standing beside her car when she left the building and the same thing always happened.

Beth Andrews was different in that she seemed to like me. I'd been there a month when she started stopping at the guard desk when she left for the night. She'd always smile and tell me she'd see me the next night. After a while, I started looking for her every night because she was pretty nice to look at.

Beth looked a little older than me and had a figure that wouldn't quit. Like most of the women, she dressed pretty casually for work. Usually she wore a tank top and jeans. The jeans did a good job of showing off her wide, sensuous hips, but it was the tank tops that showed me Beth was doing a little advertising.

Beth had really big breasts, and by really big, I mean they looked like they'd each be a double handful. I knew she always wore a bra to hold them up because I could see the bra straps under the straps of the tank top. She evidently liked to be comfortable though, because other than keeping her big breasts in about the same general location, her bras didn't keep them from moving around and they swayed or bobbed every time she did anything.

She also liked tank tops with things written on them. One of my favorites was the one with "I'm Magically Delicious" written across where her nipples probably were. Another one that made me smile was, "I'm Forty and I Feel Fabulous", with little letters just under her big breasts that said, "Wanna feel for yourself?". Then there was, "You'll never Know Unless You Ask?, "I Can't Help It That I'm Made This Way", and "Yes, They're Real".

Well, to say I was interested would be an understatement. I'd had my share of women over the years, none that I'd have considered settling down with, but they'd mostly been pretty good. It's not all that hard to find a willing woman around any Army base anywhere. All you have to do is hit a bar or two on a Friday or Saturday night.

There were a lot of single women in those bars and I dated a few, but what they were looking for was marriage and some kids. What did appeal to me were the more mature women I'd see come in with another woman or two about the same age. Most were married women, and what they were looking for was a guy to sub for their military husband who happened to be assigned somewhere else in the world. You could always tell because they weren't wearing a ring on their left hand, but the ring finger on that hand had a little shiny spot where the ring had been.

They weren't looking for anything long term. They were just looking to get laid once in a while, and that suited me just fine. I'd strike up a conversation with them and figure out which one I liked. After a drink or two, I'd ask her to dance a slow dance. It was really neat to feel her press her breasts into my chest and sigh when I let my hand slip from her back down to the swell of her hips.