Information Discussion for Gate Guards

mdbass wrote:

maxx233 wrote:
and I only had one shot at this (could hardly order as it is, and it's 2 hours round trip to get into town to pick it up.)

When someone asks about the challenges of gate guarding, this is a prime example. And 2 hours is not that far out of the ordinary, even for groceries!

Yeah, I think the top challenges I've observed after doing this for a little over a month would be...

Relationship dynamics - You have to *really* like the person you're doing this with, which fortunately we do... but that presents another problem: spending good quality time together. It's hard to do, at least on our gate, and it's kinda random chance if we do or don't get a gap between 1-3am where people aren't coming or going. Last several nights we haven't.

Resource Availability - I've never lived in a situation where I'm not 10 minutes from the nearest fast food source. Learning to plan what we'll eat for the next week+, and in our case - learning how to cook it, is a different concept when it's not simply out of convenience to not make extra trips to the store - but out of near necessity. It's very difficult for us to plan the time to get into town, shop, and get back - and even when we do it efficiently it still tweaks with our schedules (I have to wake up earlier, my wife has to stay on shift later, etc) It ripples for a day or two after the fact.

Planning - Like you observed, it's hard to not necessarily have a second shot at things - either it needs to be planned out very thoughtfully, or it needs to be done fool-proof or it could be an enormous hassle to correct. I'm very analytical, and never buy anything without spending loads of time on Amazon comparing options and reading reviews. With the cellphone booster I just couldn't do that, and it hurt - but I had to go with gut feeling on what I'd researched at random and dump the cash to just make it happen. That's happened several times - before coming here, our bed was getting uncomfortable, and we just sucked it up and dumped the money for a new one. VERY unlike me, but I'm immeasurably glad we did because there's no fat chance we could have gotten a new bed after getting this assignment. There's more examples of similar things that have cropped up, but so far nothing I regret - just stuff that's against my normal way of doing things.

Social Life - I'm getting to know the guys who come in and out of the gate more. And my facebook friends are probably muting me.

Excercise - we're not getting any. I'm beginning to be concerned about this. We're both in fine physical shape, just through normal activity, but since we're not so active on the gate I feel we should be compensating somehow, but I haven't put together how yet.

But there are also advantages:

We've been on the road for a year, and when we first set out on this trip I was so excited about all these things I wanted to do: Learn guitar, program more (my normal job), read, ponder various life philosophies, etc. Come to find out, traveling is very time consuming and I hardly got to touch any of those projects until now. Now I have 8 hours each day where my wife is asleep, and I can spend those hours doing anything that can be done with occasional interruptions to answer the bell. I'm completely loving that.

Despite having to swallow my pride and dump money on things from time to time - it's incredibly easy to save money doing this. Expenses are very few and simple, pay is reliably consistent (at least for our gate, we travel with them for as long as we care to stick with them.) Just have to make sure you set aside your own taxes.

It's also an interesting experience seeing how various operations are done - I watched a drill rig (I presume) on a pad about 300 meters out our window, and it was quite intriguing to see. Another time I watched the process of hooking up a big-rig to a tow truck. Random stuff like that I've always wondered how its done, and I actually get to see some now. And yet another time I watched some of the guys trying to pull an 85,000lb sand truck out of a foot of mud with an F250 (But I'm pretty sure they were just playing around that time) ;)

Another random perk for me has been having a legitimate (enough for my wife to finally approve at least) excuse to buy some cheap surveillance doo-dads. That stuff just intrigues the heck out of me for some reason, and I finally have a cheapo wireless PTZ camera, and our camcorder hooked up to some DVR software. I got the approval for this not because we need surveillance by any means, but because it makes it a heck of a lot easier to see which direction people are coming/going from when the bell goes off and we're parked at an awful angle (2 of the 3 sites we've been at so far), or well before it goes off to buy us some extra time to wrap things up before they're waiting outside or flying out the gate (it also makes it easier to go back and figure out who flew out the gate so we can maintain our headcount lol) But really.. I just wanted it :)