I heard a very interesting rant last night at wok. During break, I had gone over to the Circle K down the street to buy me something to munch on. When I came back there were two girls trying, and failing miserably, to get into the building. Now, while they did start after me, they are hardly “newbies” anymore. In any case, they seemed to be having trouble getting past the keypad system to open the door and I had to do it for them.

Here’s what cracked me, they both think the security system is completely unnecessary, one of them even ranted long and hard about how every job she’s ever held has never had a security system that the workers were forced to deal with. At this point they both looked at me and expected me to contribute. I just kind of shrugged and said this was the easiest system I ever had to deal with, and it is. Needless to say, I didn’t make any friends with admission.

The thing is, I spoke the complete truth. When I worked with NMSU Athletics I had to remember each code for a team’s “clubhouse” because they all had different home security systems installed. Football’s was never really activated, but the trackhouse, weightroom, baseball, softball, and basketball ones all had different codes and almost all had a different system set up. At one point, both the Baseball and Softball clubhouses had the same system and shared the same code, but then baseball got broken into, then they built them a new clubhouse too. With that came a new system to learn and a new code to memorize. So every time I went to pick up or drop off laundry from the locker rooms at the clubhouses I had to unlock the doors, race to the system and key in my code before the silent alarm went off and I had NMSU police raining down on me. At Softball this was way easy, because the security panel was wisely located at the entry way. So you unlocked the door, took a few steps into the foyer and there was the panel.

Baseball, as explained (with pictures!) in this post, was an entirely different situation. There were three alarm panels, only two of which were closely and safely positioned near a doorway. I say safely because the baseball team tended to leave their gear and chairs scattered all over the floor of the entertainment room, which was the closest room to the parking lot that had an alarm panel and a door. Tripping over their stuff was so fun at night. Because, even if you had a chance to flip the lights on, you were still trying to cross a room and all of its obstacles in under 20 seconds to turn off an alarm, or get out before the system armed. Another alarm was in one of the coach’s office and the other was clear across the building and, to make things worse, that foyer had a secondary door they normally kept locked. We found that out the hard way one night when we went in, turned off the alarm, reached the secondary door, and found it locked and none of our keys fit it. We had to walk all the way around and enter another door. Royal pain in the butt.

Those systems were annoying in that you had to get to the alarm and key the code in fast enough, or set the alarm and get the heck out of dodge fast enough. The security system I dealt with at Zales in the mall was an industrial one that was a pain on a whole different level. You had to turn off all the lights and vents, and anyone still there with you had to stand completely still and make no noise. It took a key and a long pass code to get the system activated. First you had to unlock the panel,flip the switches which turned on the security lights and booted up the system. Now, like timed safes that are used in convenience stores, you had to follow the next steps at the right time. You had to insert the alarm key, turn it, wait about twenty seconds for the go ahead light, then enter a twelve-digit code. The system would kick on and each little section of the store would become monitored. Here’s the part where no one could move, until the system was fully alive, any movement or noise triggered the system and it would throw back that there were “insecure” points. And one had to do the whole process over again. After word you had a few seconds to book it, lower the grates and back away before the alarm went off.

In comparison, having a door system that requires us to key in a 5-digit code and press the # on a panel in order to gain admission to a building is hardly a troublesome system. Especially when, if you screw it up, all you have to do is clear it and try again.