A few decades ago, while working at a small department, our Watch Commander on nights, Frank, was a very demanding sort, one who wanted things done
his way and his way only. To that end, when Frank decided to divide our village into northern and
southern halves, one of us would be assigned to each side with specific
responsibilities…mainly performing building security checks.
Frank wanted our businesses checked several times throughout
the shift; there’d been a rash of businesses burglarized throughout the county
and this was a tactic he’d utilize to make it tougher for the criminals to hit
us in the village.
Checking buildings, when you’re not otherwise occupied, can
get very tedious, not to mention down right boring. Occasionally one of us would find a business’s door unlocked,
but those times were few and far between. Frank had gotten it into his head that Paul and I weren’t
shaking any doors since we weren’t finding very many open so, one night before
we left the station to start our patrol routine, he made an announcement to
both of us.
“Before I came in tonight, I marked six business doorknobs…three
north and three south…with ketchup; your job will be to find those doors and
notify me which ones they were at the end of the shift.”
I have to be honest, this was a little ridiculous; we’re
grown men, enforcing the law, carrying the power of life and death on our hips
in the form of sidearms and charged with making a split-second decision, should
it ever come to that, on whether or not to use that power…yet he couldn’t trust
us that we were checking the security of the village’s businesses?
After about the third night of this, I formulated a tactic
of my own, employing it to good measure. When the time came to go on station
for the end of our shift, I informed Frank that I’d found not one, not two….but
SEVEN business door knobs marked with ketchup, and told him which ones they
were.
“But that can’t be, young man…I only marked three!”
“Well, LT, you can go out and check for yourself because I
didn’t clean them off.” We were supposed to carry napkins and wipe the doors
clean after finding his markings. I didn’t do it on this night, with purpose;
I’d made a stop of my own on the way to work to get a fast-food burger…and a
big handful of ketchup packets.
The next night, not only did I mark a few extra in my end of
the village, but also on his end (
Paul was on nights off, meaning the WC would be out shaking doors), which perplexed him mightily. The next night, same
thing…only I added a little mustard to his end of the village, too. When I was
on nights off, I made it a point to go out about two hours before their shift
began and leave some ketchup and mustard on business doorknobs throughout the
village; this way, the same thing was happening even when I was off. (Good thing
I lived close to the village, huh?)
It wasn’t too long after that that we stopped reporting our
condiment findings before gearing down after our shift, and Frank never said
another word about it.
I think he got the message.
*** Names were changed to protect the identity of officers involved
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