Shocked and upset, I ran off to the side of the stage, where someone from the ambulance service rushed me to a seat, asked me if I was all right and briefly checked me over. I was dazed and a little winded, but otherwise I was fine. As I stared back at my hero rescuing damsel upon damsel, and up at the band strutting their gorgeous stuff on stage, deep down I somehow knew that one day I would be doing the same job – saving people at concerts and protecting gorgeous pop stars.
‘And what a job it will be,’ I thought to myself as I struggled to hear the paramedic confirm that I wasn’t concussed or injured. I would work all over the country, maybe even the world. I might work at a pop concert one day and at a football match or horse race the next – I loved horses. Perhaps I might work at private parties, maybe even a Robbie Williams party, where I would protect him from his fans. Of course, Robbie and I would eventually become friends, and I would be invited to his dressing-room so that he could thank me in person for keeping him safe and secure. Yes, the security industry was definitely going to be the one for me.
Years passed, and I was suddenly 19 and about to leave school. Surprisingly, for a dizzy and fairly shy blonde, I found that I did quite well at school and had three A Levels and eight O Levels to my name. Although I considered myself fairly well educated, I didn’t really have a direction. However, I did know that I had had enough of sitting in boring classrooms, listening to boring lectures, and I definitely did not want to go to university. I wanted to get out into the world of work and make some money – my parents had bought me a series of five driving lessons to start me off, and I needed to earn some cash to pay for the rest.
I think my teenage lustful dream of following in the footsteps of my heroic saviour faded a few days after the concert, and at school I was preoccupied with more mundane teenage things. I hadn’t really thought about security and the security industry, and being a security guard didn’t really feature in the lectures from the boring and extremely narrow-minded careers officers. They focused mainly on professional careers, although I never understood why security guards were always deemed to be so lowly and unintelligent. Did they not look after property and people? Were they not first on the scene in an emergency? Were they not the fount of all knowledge in their place of work?
Just after my 19th birthday, I left school and went into retail. I was a shop assistant in Top Shop, which was actually surprisingly good fun for a while. I enjoyed serving people and chatting about clothes and fashion – what teenage girl didn’t? While working as a shop assistant, I got to know the security guards and the undercover store detectives, which I think was the spark that ignited new thoughts and feelings about the security industry. I would quickly notice whenever the store detective or security guard had spotted a shoplifter and always ask what the outcome was. Were they arrested? Did they go to the police station? Did they go to jail? After a while, I became more interested in the security guards than doing my job serving the customers and putting out and tidying stock.
On one occasion, I actually managed to follow a shoplifter who had stolen a scarf out of the store. Once outside, I gave chase and grabbed the culprit by the collar, before a security guard arrived, who’d seen me chase someone out of the store. I was so pleased with myself – I’d got the shoplifter and the goods – but upon my triumphant return the manager flipped his lid and was furious with me. He sternly reminded me that it wasn’t my role to chase shoplifters. I expected a medal, but instead I got a reprimand and a verbal warning. I knew then that it was time to leave the shop.
After another few months, I handed in my notice and left Top Shop. If I couldn’t chase criminals and shoplifters, I didn’t want to work at the store at all. I applied and got an office job at a stationery supply company shortly after quitting the retail trade. My role was mainly filing and sorting correspondence, dealing with orders, ordering stock, and doing other mundane things, which I actually hated and which almost drove me insane. It was so incredibly boring and stagnant that sometimes I didn’t even leave the building for lunch, taking the half hour allocated to eat my sandwich whilst sitting on a wooden box out in the back corridor daydreaming. After just a few short months, I handed in my notice. It had sent me stir crazy. The only good thing about the job had been that once or twice a week I’d delivered stationery orders to all sorts of people around the city centre, and I’d really enjoyed meeting the customers. It was the only contact I had with the outside world. On one occasion, I got chatting to a security guard at an office I delivered copy paper to. I thought the guard fancied me until I saw the wedding band on his ring finger. Well, maybe he did still fancy me, but married men were not really my cup of tea.
Anyway, I asked him a few questions about his job, as I really wanted to do something for a living that I enjoyed and that would motivate and inspire me, and not just live from weekend to weekend, dreading every Monday morning and yearning for every Friday evening. Surely there was more to life? He suggested I apply for a position with his security company, and I scribbled down the name and address of the company and promised to contact them over the following few days.
However, as is so often the case, it actually took me well over a year to contact the company, as I decided to take some time off work to sort myself out once I’d left the boring office job. What was initially meant to be just a few weeks off work ended up being 18 long months on the dole. I went through a few unpleasant personal events at that time, which had knocked me for six, and I spent quite a while getting myself together and sorting my life out. Because I was fairly young, I think that my personal life affected me more severely than I had originally realised. I had very little self-confidence or motivation and thought myself pretty worthless, but I was still keen on getting into the security industry.
It was 2005 and SIA licences had just been made compulsory. I could barely afford to exist on benefits, let alone afford the cost of a training course and the three-year licence fee. Lots of security companies offered security-guard courses with the promise of employment, but I knew I didn’t want to go down that route. I wanted to do some proper training and eventually work in event security looking after celebrities. I was told by a friend of a friend that it would be much better for me if I got my door-supervisors’ licence, which would enable me to work in a normal guarding environment as well as in a more specific security role. However, because event security work was not full time, most security companies did not provide training and only tended to take on those who were already licensed.
For the next few weeks, I spent hours searching the Internet and eventually found on a forum for doormen a training course for unemployed women wanting to get into the security industry. The course was funded by the government and would be provided free of charge – but I still needed to find the money for the licence.
Apart from making a beeline for the security guards almost everywhere I went – I think maybe I had a ‘thing’ for men in uniform – I didn’t have any real experience of the security industry, but I somehow knew it was going to be the one for me. I called the company providing the training and was sent an application pack, which I immediately completed and returned. It was a four-day course, held about an hour’s underground journey from my house.
On the morning of the first day of the course, I was filled with trepidation and unease. I hadn’t studied since my A levels, and I hadn’t worked for almost 18 months. Maybe it would be too difficult for me, or maybe I wouldn’t get on with any of the other women on the course, or maybe I would find that my desire to work in security was unfounded and that it wasn’t the industry for me after all. So many thoughts swirled around my head as I sat on the underground making my way towards Wimbledon.
I had preconceived ideas about who would make a good security guard, what sort of people they were, what they were like and how they behaved, and after just a few hours’ training I could honestly say that most of the women on the course were definitely not the sort of people I would want to work with. Maybe it was be
cause it was a course specifically for women on the dole, but I guess it would be fair to say that most were social undesirables – misfits who couldn’t do much else with their lives. There were a lot of butch bisexual women who felt bizarrely compelled to boast about their physical prowess, fighting skills and ability to knock people out. Maybe that was what being a butch bisexual was. Or maybe they were trying to impress me a little, because I was blonde and petite. Whatever the reason, I felt it was a strange, immature and horrible attitude and certainly an approach that the security industry, with its new licences and standardised training, was striving to get rid of.
After four days of security training and first aid, I took the multiple-choice exam and passed the course with flying colours. I was a qualified security guard.
My first day on the doors wasn’t actually spent on the doors at all; instead, I worked as a hospitality steward at the Reading Festival. I was very excited but very nervous at the same time, as I had obviously never actually done the job before. In fact, I had never even been to Reading before, and I had never met any of my colleagues, either. Yes, the thought of working at the famous Reading Festival caused me a few sleepless nights.
I wasn’t big enough or confident enough to stand in front of the stage, so I was used at the entrance to the site, searching women and dealing with any female issues that my male colleagues couldn’t handle or didn’t want to handle. I could still hear the music loud and clear, even though I was nowhere near the stage or the pop stars. There was no trouble, everyone seemed happy and sane, and although the days were really long I had a wonderful time.
My next job was at the cricket at Trent Bridge in Nottingham. I applied for the position because my boyfriend happened to be living in the city, and I thought it would be a great idea to stay with him for a few days while I worked. Lots of sunshine and lots of alcohol combined to make lots of rowdy punters. From my position on the front gates, I watched with envy as the four-man response team ran here, there and everywhere, dealing with various incidents. During those few days, I witnessed numerous fights and a few ejections, but nothing major. It was generally just a case of over-the-top but light-hearted fun that occasionally got out of hand.
Although I did thoroughly enjoy my job, I was getting fed up with standing around all day doing very little, and I really wanted to be part of the response team. I wanted some action, but my manager laughed at my wishes, saying that an eight-stone blonde could never do that kind of work. However, I was determined to prove them wrong one day.
During my time in event security, I have witnessed and been involved in a lot of incidents, especially as a steward at Millwall Football Club, and especially working on the segregation line in the Upper East stand. Whenever a goal was scored, the entire stand would erupt, cheering and jeering and dancing and singing, and we had to try to control the elated crowd and stop them running behind our line. I certainly wasn’t prepared for it when I experienced it for the first time, and I nearly fell down the stairs as I tried to hold back two different people and get them into the seating area where they should have been. I was struggling to keep hold of them and at the time stop myself from going arse over tit. It was scary but exhilarating, and after that first day I was much better prepared.
As I slowly proved my worth to my boss, I was given tougher and rougher roles and responsibilities, and one day I was asked if I could handle being placed behind the turnstiles at a football ground to grab anyone who jumped over and then kick them out. ‘Of course I am capable,’ I almost screamed at my boss, who was very hesitant about giving me my new role. I was put with another guy who boasted about his fighting abilities and expertise in martial arts. I wonder why security guards feel a need to boast all the time, especially when most of them cannot match their words. As my new partner ranted on and on about the various escapades he had found himself sorting out over his few months as a steward, I quickly understood that he was a complete dickhead. I politely listened and nodded, but I was bored out of my brain and hoped he would go and stand somewhere far away.
Suddenly, a big bloke jumped over the turnstiles, and, assuming my colleague would be right behind me, I ran hell for leather and apprehended him. It was only when I was really struggling with this guy who was double my size that I realised I had no back-up. In the end, two stewards from another company came to my assistance. The dickhead ‘jacket filler’ just stood there watching. ‘You couldn’t manage him on your own,’ he said, smirking. I felt like smashing him square in the teeth.
I love my job as a steward and am currently looking for a nightclub door to work. I also aim to start close protection training as soon as I have saved enough money for a course. I eventually want to work in every aspect of the security industry.
22
A TRUE STORY OF CORPORATE CRIME IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
BY ROBIN BARRATT
In the late 1990s, a US-based global vehicle-battery manufacturer, and one of the biggest auto-component companies in the world, set up an office and a manufacturing plant just outside Moscow, serving their extensive chain of established retailers throughout the Russian Federation. They had, in fact, been trading in Russia since the early ’90s but had not actually manufactured their batteries in the country. Everything had been assembled in Ukraine and then imported as a completed unit.
The company had a large turnover, but actually made very little profit in Russia, which baffled the US directors and accountants, as the rest of their global offices had more or less the same margins, yet made much greater profits, no matter where in the world they operated. After a very detailed internal audit, a thorough investigation and a large number of unscheduled visits to retailers around Russia, a huge discrepancy was discovered between the number of units that were imported and those that were actually on the shelves. It was found that there was an estimated four or five times the number of batteries being sold than were registered on the export sheets from Ukraine. This meant that somewhere along the supply chain counterfeit batteries were being manufactured and sold as originals.
Counterfeiting was (and still is) extremely common in Russia; in fact, it has been estimated that probably 75 per cent of all products are fake, and you never really know whether you are buying the genuine product or a cheap counterfeit, repackaged and sold as the original. You need to know exactly what you are buying and be familiar with the supplier, and you always need to make sure that you only shop in the most well-known shops and supermarkets, although even they can occasionally get caught out by unscrupulous suppliers and clever conmen.
One famous case involved an Italian boutique selling very expensive designer coats in Smolenska Passage, an upmarket shopping mall in the centre of Moscow not far from the British Embassy. The coats were supposed to have come directly from Italy and had a huge price tag to match; however, the only thing that came from Italy was the labels – everything else was manufactured in sweatshops on the outskirts of the city. Admittedly, the templates were from actual one-off items bought in Italy, so in theory the coats were made from Italian designs, but they were sold as genuine imports and not cheap imitations made locally with substandard materials and shoddy workmanship. The owner of the boutique went over to Italy on a cheap package holiday once or twice a year, bought a few coats, brought them back to Moscow illegally and then counterfeited them. The owner eventually got caught, not because of a complaint, but because one of the designers instigated a global investigation and the Moscow shop was targeted.
Hundreds if not thousands of Russian retailers do exactly the same – buy templates from abroad while on holiday and have them copied and sold as originals. A major high-street pharmacy and one of the biggest chains in the Russian Federation was recently charged with selling a huge range of counterfeit perfume. Apparently, the main buyer was targeted by the Mafia and bribed to buy products from a company that specialised in counterfeiting fragrances. In the same year, a large supermarket chain was also caught selling hundreds of imitation goods.
The batteries that were being sold as genuine imports were Russian made and of very poor quality. However, they had been cleverly inserted into the supply chain and made to look as though they had been imported from the real company. This did the company no good; first, its reputation was falling to pieces; and second, someone else was making a vast amount of money.
It could not be pinpointed exactly how this crime had been put in place. It also proved to be extremely difficult to ascertain where the counterfeit supply came from – probably because too many people had been paid off and too many people were scared of the consequences of spilling the beans. So, the company decided to import the components directly into Moscow, where they would then be assembled and distributed, which would hopefully make things easier to control.
The Russian financial crisis of 1998 provided a perfect excuse to get rid of the old directors. As banks collapsed and the rouble devalued, most foreign companies pulled out of the country. Many people lost everything in just a few short months – Russia was no longer the get-rich-quick place it had been at the fall of Communism. The very few foreign companies that decided to remain cut their staff and their operating costs and rode the storm. The auto-component company was one of the few that stayed, and new Russian directors were appointed, new systems put in place and a new manufacturing plant opened in Zelenograd, about 30 kilometres north-west of Moscow’s outer ring road.
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