Just don't give him a gun.

This post will culminate in a rant, so I should start by saying what a great time I had chaperoning my nephew's field trip. I wouildn't want it to appear that I didn't enjoy that. Until approximately 2:11 p.m., I was having a great day. I suppose I'm still having a good day, but the idiocy of irritating people has downgraded it from great. Here's why.

My nephew's field trip ended at 1:00. He went back to school, and I had a couple of hours on my hands until my brother would be home from work, so I had a blissful couple of hours completely to myself, to do exactly as I pleased. Since I'm in Galveston, and I love being in Galveston, I decided to poke around here a bit until heading back to my brother's house.

I drove down to the beach and walked along one of the jetties, taking pictures (artistic stuff, like rocks...hey, an artist would say the pictures had "texture"), and enjoying the beautiful weather - 70s, sunshiney and with a coastal breeze. After that, I drove over to the library to check email and write a little on my laptop. It was so gorgeous outside, I decided to just park and sit outside the library rather than going in. The wifi connection is just as strong on the sidewalk.

So, I parked myself on a low wall just outisde. It's about a foot deep - plenty of room for one's butt and just the right height for my feet to be on the ground and my knees to make a table for my laptop. I'm typing away, unmolested, and all is well. Out comes one security guard - he speaks to another guy sitting across from me on a cement bench, then wanders off to smoke a cigarette. A few minutes later, here comes another one. Inexplicably, this one shouts over to me, "Ma'am! You can't sit on that retaining wall." Pause. No explanation. "You can sit over on one of these benches."

Now, I picked up my laptop and moved to the bench without a word, but the little scene begs one really important question. WHY? Why can I not sit on the retaining wall? It's sitting height, and it's a foot deep, pretty much exactly like the benches, so I won't fall off and injure myself, leading to liability for the library. It's made of cement, so I won't be knocking it over or damaging it. There are no signs that say I can't sit there. It's only separted from the benches by a sidewalk, so it's just as safe as the benches as far as traffic goes. So, what's the deal?

It's not that it matters so much whether I sit in one place or the other, but that's kind of my point. Rather than just pushing people around with no explanation, do me the courtesy of at least explaining why. Help me to understand. The other security guard clearly didn't care. So, what's the deal? I actually work in a crowd control capacity pretty frequently, and I can assure you that if you tell people WHY you're asking them to be here instead of there, they're usually more compliant and feel less hassled. I know I would. There *must* be a reason they care which piece of concrete I sit on.

But while I sat in the "correct" place, I heard him hassle a couple of other people about where they were sitting and whatnot, and honestly, what I mostly came away with was the feeling that some people shouldn't have uniforms and/or authority. They just shouldn't. By some standards you might say they were good at their jobs - they herd the cattle where they're supposed to be - but in the end, whoever hired them would be better served by someone who made people feel like he wasn't just pushing them around for the sake of it. Let people know that you're not trying to hassle them - there's a rule for a good reason, and you're just looking out for them, or the building, or whatever. They'll appreciate that you had enough human respect for them to explain...or at least some will. Some will call you a Nazi no matter what the reason is for asking them not to hang from the balcony by their shoelaces. But the rest of us - the reasonable ones - we'll appreciate not being treated like a wayward teenager with a bad attitude.