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Overheard Monitoring Mall Security—Different This Year? Ken Reiss, <armadillo1@aol.com> |
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This is the
Uniden BC780, but the new 785 is going to |
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It’s getting to be that time of year again. It’s time to do all that holiday shopping and plan for travel over the holiday week, sure, but that’s not the time of year I was talking about. I was referring to the fact that it’s time to load your scanner with mall frequencies! Scanning the mall can be quite entertaining. Quite frequently, additional security personnel are added for the increased workload, and not all of them are familiar with procedures. Between inexperienced officers and more frequent problems due to the increased crowds, the combination can result in some amusing discussions. I suspect, with the current focus on security, that situation will be quite common this year. Most of the security officers and others who are to be heard on the radio are not professional communications specialists, to say the least. Even the full-time employees frequently use the radio “only because they have to,” and, during the holidays, there are likely to be a number of part-time staff added to help with the increased workload. This part-time staff will need directions and answers to questions that customers may ask hundreds of times a day, but maybe a certain part-timer hasn’t had the question come up before, and it must be answered over the radio by a senior employee. Sometimes it’s answered for the one-hundredth time by that particular senior employee and the answer is somewhat less than polite.
Our mall also runs into parking problems
around the holidays, and a whole detail of folks is dedicated to solving
that problem and transporting staff and guests to other off-site parking.
To say the least, security is tighter and there are likely to be more
problems in general during the holiday shopping season with so many people
coming and going, and, unfortunately, more opportunities for unscrupulous
types to take advantage of as well. |
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