I should be fair and clear – I’m calling him a pipsqueak, but he’s not short. He’s just a mental midget. He’s certainly taller than I am, for sure. I suppose “pipsqueak” wasn’t the right word given its height connotations, but its the best word I can think of for this guy that’s not profane.
And ZiggyB, I didn’t violate a policy. Our corporate security works on our behalf. They don’t dictate policy, they follow and enforce policies given to them by those of us who run the company. All of the hoo-ha about the “tailgating” practice has come from our security people who somehow seem to think that they are incapable of adequately doing their jobs if we persist in this oh-so-terribly dangerous behavior. Clearly we aren’t opening secure areas to strangers or unauthorized guests, but they’re complaining nevertheless.
Please understand that if we were to follow the demands of our security company, the process of three people passing through a door would take close to 45 seconds (depending on the door) because many of our internal doors are oversized, heavy doors with a very slow closing time. They’re on pneumatics that I know that I personally cannot force to close any faster than they do, the doors are simply too large and the pneumatics too strong for the doors to be quickly pulled shut. The doors must be fully closed and the electronic locks re-engaged before another security badge can be scanned and the door re-opened. The slowness of the door closing was intentional; often our scientific staffers are moving through the facility carrying large, cumbersome equipment through those doors and that lag allows them time to manuever.
Please also understand, that as I said, there are frequent times (twice each day, on average) when entire workgroups of 10-14 people move en masse through multiple sets of these doors. Security has indicated that they feel that it is not in our best interests for those groups of 14 people to pass through those doors without individual badging. The expectation is simply beyond ridiculous – remember, these are people who are employees who work together every day, and had to have security clearance to get to the areas in question to begin with. The only reason for individual badging in such cases is to monitor each person’s movements through analyzing which badge hit which scanner at which time.
And that’s not just speculation. The security company has never been asked to gather metrics on security badge usage or employee movements, but they do. They say that they use the information in aggregate form to create “movement and usage profiles” but since our badges are personally identifying, there is considerable question as to what they are doing with the data. One excuse they’ve used is that they want to know if any doors need “additional security oversight” but all of our doors are badge-entry only and have surveillance cameras and alarms on them, so short of placing guards at our internal doors that we’ve already had to have a badge to get to, there is no further oversight for them to provide.
The more I think on it, the more inclined I feel to bring significant pressure to bear for an investigation as to what authority the security company has to record the data that it has, and if necessary, revamp the system entirely in order to bring an end to the practice. It’s bothering me the more that I think about it.
