Bottom Feeding Joke of a Company - Security Guard Star Protection Agency (HI) Employee Review

I won't pull any punches here. If you're looking into working for Star Protection this information might help you get through a few months until something better comes along. 1. The pay. It isn't worth it. This company exists solely to pad a resume before applying to a better company in the area. If you want to be an on-call substitute it could be worth it, but say goodbye to your social life. Most of the sites under contract are understaffed because the pay sucks vs the job requirements and the regular guards call out sick because they hate working there, so these sites rape the hell out of the substitute SRO guards. Some sites use more SRO guards than regular guards it's so bad. 2. The requirements. This company's business plan operates like this: a.) find a business that already has an existing contract with a higher quality and more capable company. b.) Undercut the hell out of that company by paying your employees peanuts. c.) Abandon all support for this new contract you just landed and move onto finding the next one. Seriously, it seems like for every new contract Star gets they lose two or three other ones via neglect. It's an unarmed company, total, bottom line. This means there is nowhere to move up in the company unless you play ball and try to please everyone by doing whatever you're told without asking why, ever. There are no armed contracts because this company is so cheap they refuse to deal with the added insurance liability. No pepper spray, no firearms, no batons, no handcuffs, no nothing. You are a warm body in an ill-fitting SECURITY jacket that anyone can buy at the mall, and even though any civilian can legally buy pepper spray or carry a baton you cannot. If you're caught carrying any kind of weapon you will be terminated on the spot. This means the homeless jerk you're trying to kick out of somewhere can mace you in the face and you get nothing to protect yourself. It's completely backwards. 3. The homeless. Because it's an understaffed unarmed company that outbids other companies at the lowest common denominator you'll find yourself on job sites that are horribly lacking in proper coverage while having an absolutely ineffective ability to respond and contain the problems taking place. All the homeless people and street rat teens do a visual pat down and realize you're an unarmed guard. Because of this they refuse to listen to anything you ask them to do. They know you're unarmed which means the job site doesn't care enough to hire a real security company, and they know you can't touch them. You're a total joke. Seattle Police Department refuses to respond to anything unless you state there is a weapon involved. Otherwise have fun standing around waiting for hours just in case a patrol SUV happens to show up. They have better things to do than tell the same worthless scumbag to move along. This removes any leverage or authority you thought you might have had. I once watched a person who had their car window broken out and items stolen wait for eight hours until a cop showed up to take a statement for a report. If your site has a public restroom and / or parking garage you may as well quit before you start because every five minutes will have another homeless junkie taking a shower in the sink or passed out in a corner under the stairs with a needle hanging out of their arm. Seriously, these cockroaches will consume your entire existence, and even after you go home you won't be able to get the smell of wet dog, pee, and unwashed rear end crack out of your nose. 4. The management. Star Protection does promote from within, but if you haven't moved up in six months then you're never going to move up because you've probably butted heads with too many other people. God forbid you try to change anything for the better by voicing a disagreement. If you say anything that could be construed as out of line you'll find yourself being written up for mundane pointless nonsense since you're now making your boss look bad, same as any comparable position at Jack in the Box or WalMart. Which reminds me, half of the supervisors resumes list Jack in the Box and WalMart, and being that they don't know a single thing about security work they'll operate based on what they do know, which includes micromanaging you down to any given minute of your shift. These idiots will go out of their way to throw you under the bus and find something about you to write up in a disciplinary form rather than try to be proactive and do a little work or preventative action. Last time I checked, a manager was responsible for the actions of their team, but not here at good old Star Protection. Here the managers get to sit in the office blaming their underlings for any complaints the clients may have about the day to day operations. This brings me to the next bit: 5. SilverTrac. If you haven't heard of this ridiculous garbage consider yourself lucky. Then again, if you're a new hire you'd better get to know this app inside and out because it is the only weapon the company provides. See, SilverTrac "isn't used to micromanage you as a guard, it's to protect you so if an incident occurs somewhere else on your job site the company has proof of where you were." read: "SilverTrac is used exclusively to micromanage you and the managers only care about how many points you scan in your shift because this can be printed out in a tangible report used to show the client how hard you work your minions." The analogy is as follows: Client: "Hello, I need a Big Mac." Supervisor: "Well, my team didn't make any Big Macs today, but look, they made 273 Chicken McNuggets!" Managers don't do anything other than wave the printouts showing how many QR barcodes you've scanned in a shift with the SIlverTrac app on the phones they provide. Some jerk that doesn't work for the company anymore decided to invest all their time in showcasing SilverTrac as the end all be all solution to proper security work. They print out these little QR barcodes and stick them around on things every 5-10 feet, and if you go more than two minutes between them without scanning anything then you'd better damn sure state why in your report, otherwise it's time to bring out the disciplinary forms for that insubordination write up. These people need to know down to the minute when you're taking a dump, it's that insane. The best bit is they're all so stupid they don't even realize anyone can take a picture of the QR codes with their personal phone and then use SilverTrac to scan that picture of the code on your personal phone's screen. SilverTrac is utterly useless and all it does is train a guard to look for these stupid stickers instead of paying attention to their environment. 6. Discrepancies in duties. This one has to do with pay, but it's so bad it's got it's own list number here. See, all the duties are different on any given job site, but all the entry level guards are paid the same. This means that some old fart retiree with nothing better to do gets to sit at a front desk and be the concierge for a hotel and he gets paid the same to do nothing, while another guard has to march around outside in the 35 degree rainy weather scanning 582 SilverTrac codes and yelling at the same homeless junkies they saw 20 minutes ago. Because of this everyone is fighting to work at a desk. There aren't enough desks to go around, and if management doesn't like you then guess what, you're out in the cold rain scanning pointless SilverTrac codes for the same $13 / hour as that lazy idiot playing Candy Crush on his phone in the warm lobby. And good luck transferring to another easier site because they don't exist, and if they do they don't have any openings. Once a set of old geezers gets all posted up in one they never leave because sitting at a desk playing games on a phone is easy money. 7. Communication. Most managers have outdated Post Orders with incorrect information because none of them last long enough to keep them up to date. The Post Orders are supposed to contain all the information you need to know, in writing, so there are no arguments on what the duties are at any given site. Because they're all outdated guards can now be held accountable for intangible things, hearsay, and vocal communications, or lack thereof. This grants the supervisors and managers plausible deniability, and removes any responsibility of their minion's actions. Most managers refuse to communicate via email or text message as well because it leaves a trail of proof in writing. They'll tell you one thing on the phone and then write you up for something completely different. Unless you record all your conversations there's no way to hold them accountable for anything. Since no one has a clear understanding of what any given guard is supposed to be doing, they all do the bare minimum to the point of not being questioned or written up for anything, just enough to not get fired. The guards also start inventing other things to do which have nothing to do with their duties which gives them an excuse to avoid doing any real work. Since managers and supervisors are constantly in and out via the revolving door, they come onto a new site and take whatever these lazy guards describe as their duties at face value. Eventually the client starts questioning the boss as to why these lazy guards aren't doing anything and the boss doesn't have an answer. Now the boss starts throwing all the guards that actually do any work under the bus and ramps up their workloads to compensate because it's the easiest solution to the issue. The lazy guards have been lazy from day one and you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and you can't fire them because of the union. 8. The union. The union is SEIU 6, and they "work for" security guards as well as the janitors, so you can tell they're a real top notch operation. I won't even mention all the protests and news coverage concerning allegations of corruption, money laundering, and skimming off the top. This is the most ineffective union I've ever seen and all they care about is buying themselves things with your money. I've never even met the union rep for my job site, and 9/10 guards here couldn't even tell you what his name is. Of course, this is if you're lucky enough to get into the union. Most guards don't even have the benefits they're supposed to have because HR sits on the paperwork until it's too late and just files you away as waiving them and unless you have a major life change you can't get benefits until next year due to the latest Obama Care laws preventing it. I've never even met the people in HR because the day I got hired they had the receptionist doing their job for them. She fitted us for our uniforms and gave us all the HR paperwork to do. Maybe for my next job I'll work in HR being that they don't ever seem to do much of anything. TLDR: If you have fingers and need a job then put in an application but by the end of your time at Star Protection the only finger left that you'll need is the middle one.