You’re quite possibly correct. I never actually saw the thing. As I said, I only saw a training film regarding it. The weight estimate came from the long-timer Pinkerton agent who trained me. He may have been senile, trying to shock the new guy or just stunningly full of bull feces. I couldn’t know.
I saw them in the early 90’s and sometimes had to replace or pull the tape if there was a question about something that happened during the night.
As I recall, the ones I saw were about the size of a salad plate and about 2" thick (including the leather carry case) and weighed a couple of pounds at most. The overnight guards were primarily posted in the City Hall building and would make hourly rounds during the night (checking doors and clocking in) around the area. This was the only time they carried the device.
Some of the long time guards said that the old devices were much bigger and heavier, so may be what the old timer was talking about.
As has been pointed out, the security guys are likely making more than minimum wage.
I don’t the cost of phones or plans in the States, but everyone has them these days and the data for this information is going to be minimal.
Unless I’m missing something, it’s much less of a burden than requiring pizza drivers to gave their own cars.
Not very much more. We had security guards that were hired into our plant after they got rid of all the regular GM guys. The made minimum wage to start. They went thru several companies, trying to get the cheapest.
I’ve done security guard work at different times in my life starting in the 90s. The last security job I had was 15 years ago. I’ve carried a Detex clock around, scanned bar codes on door frames and signed books at stations. I’m not surprised that there is a cell phone check in system now. All methods to make sure the guards actually patrol the area on the schedule the client requires them to.
It’s not the most challenging job, earns little respect from the people you have to deal with and doesn’t pay much above minimum wage for most people. At my last job, I earned $9 an hour, plus $1 hour extra for handling a dog. The pay sucked, the job sucked, but hanging out with a dog made it marginally bearable.
That’s what Wiki says.
If I was expected to lug around a 15 pound clock on my rounds, I’d want a backpack.
In 1975/6 I worked as a security guard and used these at some of the sites for which I was trained. Like later posted, 5 lbs sounds about right. I don’t know if this had a tape or a disk inside, but I bet it was a tape, because the clock was cylindrical in shape and the axis of the clock and the key would be parallel in use.
Some sites liked everything neat and orderly, the rounds done at precise time intervals and the locations walked in the same order every time, but some preferred things to be a bit variable so that somebody watching the guard make rounds would not be able to predict the timing of the next round well.
There were various checks in the system to avoid collusion between the guard and others, and to prevent the guard cheating. Of course the clock was one. Also, opening the clock required another key, and I didn’t have access to that. Somebody else was in charge of keeping the clock running and the paper loaded. Guards were generally not to get too chummy with anybody that worked at the site (though in other settings this wasn’t discouraged at all, such as when I worked at a pinball arcade in a shopping mall during operating hours to keep the kids from becoming too unruly). I also had to be bonded. I got fingerprinted by the police, who checked to see if I had any sort of criminal record.
Some sites involved going indoors and outdoors, which at 4:00 AM in the chilly Massachusetts winter made the flimsy uniform pants pretty insufficient.
Between the tape version and the disk version I know that one was larger and heavier than the other, but for the life of me I cannot remember which was heaver.
Well, until you made copies of those barcodes and kept them in your office desk drawer.
A smart phone is not cheaper than a bar code scanner.
But, if you assume that your employees will have purchased them on their own, then you can save money by having them use their equipment.