“We moved about 18 years ago and ever since the beginning we’ve had issues with parents dropping off underage (under 16, that is) kids with no supervision at our community pool for hours at a time. We’ve had issues with theft, vandalism, and non-residents using the pool because for the first ten years or so, the gate had a keypad which you had to input a number onto and people were just giving out the number to anybody and everybody. And for the first couple of years (until the HOA caught on at least), we also had a public phone that could call anywhere, free of charge. People were using it to call long-distance to Mexico and South America. When the HOA figured that out, they removed the phone and replaced it with one that could only dial 9-1-1. About eight years ago, they also replaced the keypad lock with one that you have to scan a card to get in.
Around the time they switched to the key card, they also started hiring security guards (not lifeguards) to keep an eye on things, which had been an up and down situation. We’ve had good guards and we’ve had meh guards and then we had ‘Postal’ (which was short for ‘I Could Go Postal At Any Minute, which is something some residents tagged the guy with).
Postal was a bad guard. Spectacularly bad. He would stop you at the gate and monologue at you, then get mad when you politely excused yourself and walked away. He got mad at my son and me on several occasions when we got up to drink from the water fountain, going on a rant about how the water was dirty, not fit for human consumption, going to make us sick, etc. It’s not the best-tasting water, but it’s not dangerous.
Postal also had a horrible habit of stalking around the parking area (all of about 6, maybe 10 spots total) and peering into the cars parked there to see what was inside. I got the feeling he was looking for something or maybe checking to see if they were unlocked for some reason. It creeped me out.
He would get upset over things that were none of his business to get upset over. A friend of mine was at the pool with her daughters when another kid accidentally hit her in the head with a wet Nerf football. Postal decided it was HIS job (it was not) to yell at the kid whose football it was, screaming in the kid’s face and freaking him out.
Postal would go up to kids at the park (next door to the pool) and monologue at them, which made them and their parents uncomfortable.
I heard that one night, he was there and there were some teenage girls goofing around on somebody’s phone, taking video or something. He became enraged, thinking they were taping HIM (they weren’t), and threatened to grab HIS phone and start taping THEM. His reaction freaked them out and they left.
At the Labor Day pool party (hosted by the HOA), I went up to a board member and told him I’d caught Postal staring into my car again, and it had made me really uncomfortable. Postal overheard me talking to the board member and sat for the rest of the party in his car sulking. Meanwhile, the board member proceeded to yell in my face about how I’d ruined everything. Me and all my complaints. While I had emailed the board about two dozen times over the course of May through Labor Day, I wasn’t the only one. There were probably a dozen residents (maybe more) who had been complaining about Postal’s behavior over the summer. I thought that he’d be fired and that would be the end of it.
The next summer, he had returned, however. The explanation I was given was that all the complaints had triggered his PTSD and because of that, the board not only felt compelled to hire him again but also to pay for his therapy bills.
The dude was honestly a nightmare and had no business being a security guard anywhere.”
