I work as a security operator. It's a bullshit job, in the Graeber sense.

Graeber wrote a popular book entitled Bullshit Jobs. It's an extension of an essay he wrote back in 2013, if you want a more extended gist of it.

The shorter gist is that a lot of jobs are bullshit. He divides bullshit jobs into 5 categories. Per Wikipedia (I read the whole book, but I'm not dragging it out for an excerpt):

Flunkies, who serve to make their superiors feel important, e.g., receptionists, administrative assistants, door attendants, store greeters;

Goons, who act to harm or deceive others on behalf of their employer, or to prevent other goons from doing so, e.g., lobbyists, corporate lawyers, telemarketers, public relations specialists;

Duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code, airline desk staff who calm passengers with lost luggage;

Box tickers, who create the appearance that something useful is being done when it is not, e.g., survey administrators, in-house magazine journalists, corporate compliance officers;

Taskmasters, who create extra work for those who do not need it, e.g., middle management, leadership professionals.

I think security guards are interesting case study because they are both flunkies and goons at the same time.

security guards are goons

This one I feel like I barely need to explain. Some security guards are just wanna-be cops, or they're actually off-duty cops. What's funny is that the off-duty cops behave better than the wanna-bees, because my understanding is that all those special qualified-immunity fraternal-order big-stick privileges only apply when they're acting in their actual-cop roles. So, the off-duty cop will display a much more gentle touch when telling the local "community member" (a community member is anybody who isn't a guard or an employee. So, you can imagine the nature of the euphemism and how it's deployed) to "move along now."

The wanna-bees, those are the ones who couldn't cut it as a cop but desperately want to be one. They got the thin-blue-line-Punisher patches. They got the gear. In my experience, more workplace violence results from security guards than community members and employees combined. Rage-addled jocks!

So yeah. Huge capacity to harm others, on behalf of their employer or not. One day you'll see the privileges afforded to cops afforded to private security. God help us all on that day.

security guards are flunkies

From ye olde Farmer's Almanac, on the work of Antoine-Augustin Parmentier to popularize the potato in France:

Still, even after all of Parmentier’s work, the French feared and hated potatoes. But Parmentier was undeterred. Determined to prove to his people that potatoes were, in fact, good, he started holding publicity stunts that included potatoes. He hosted stylish dinners featuring the maligned tuber, inviting such celebrities as Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier. Once, Parmentier made a bouquet of potato flowers to give to the King and Queen of France.

With the publicity stunts failing to popularize potatoes, Parmentier tried a new tactic. King Louis XVI granted him a large plot of land at Sablons in 1781. Parmentier turned this land into a potato patch, then hired heavily armed guards to make a great show of guarding the potatoes. His thinking was that people would notice the guards and assume that potatoes must be valuable. Anything so fiercely guarded had to be worth stealing, right? To that end, Parmentier’s guards were given orders to allow thieves to get away with potatoes. If any enterprising potato bandits offered a bribe in exchange for potatoes, the guards were instructed to take the bribe, no matter how large or small.

When I was first starting out as an operator, one thing my supervisor kept telling us over and over again was "perception is reality."

Perception is not reality, in reality. But in the false-reality of security theater, it is absolutely true. A person, object, place, whatever is perceived to have higher value when somebody sees that is guarded.

That's all it is. That's private security, at least in my corner of reality.

Some signs were put up recently. If there's an emergency, dial 911. For anything else, call security.