I answered an ad for armed security in Louisiana paying $1,200/week. I was hired and ready to go in 1 week. Put my life on hold and personal belongings in storage. (3 month tour)
Me and 5 other guys cram into a caravan for the 17 hour drive down there. When we finally got there. We arrived at some warehouse that we had to help clean out the offices and toss out the files and other stuff to make room so we can sleep in the offices on cheap cots. It's gets better. This must have been the free room and board they were telling us about. The owner of the building never did get his leased signed. CSS bailed out on that guy also.
After 3 hours of that FREE work, they brought in cold pizza and nothing to drink. Mind you, the people that came with me are all still very tired. This must have been the catered meals they were talking about. The red flags start going up. But, I decided to stick around for a few days.
After 3 days in this warehouse, not working on a security site, lousy meals, and very bad morale. I asked if we were being paid for working in the warehouse and standby pay. Thier reply was no standby pay and complainers don't last long here.
By the fourth day, me and other guys are really complaing about the way things are going, i.E. No pay, lousy food and sleeping conditions, no chain of command. They said they were putting us up in a motel in downtown N.O. So we spend more time packing up all of our stuff again and sitting around for hours waiting for someone to pick us up. The company had no rental cars or bus for anybody.
We get to the motel about 11 hours after we heard the news. The company made special arraingments to have the beds removed so we can sleep 8-10 guys in a room with cots. 1 guy came in later that night so he was sleeping in the bathroom. It was just insane.
After about 3 more days of this treatment, (no pay) me and 8 other smart guys jumped ship and went to another company that was actually organized. They actually had stand by pay, rental cars, nice sleeping conditions, per diem, chain of command, etc..
So overall, I lost 1 week of pay and learned some good lessons.
CSS is no more than a leach company that trying to pick up sub contracted security jobs and have guys down there waiting for thier turn to start working, whenever that will be. Before I left, I heard they had about 10 more guys on the way down. Poor guys, they will learn the hard way also.
Trust me I could go on and on, but you get the picture.
I have a 45 sec. Video of the sleeping conditions on file.
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