A long time ago when I first worked at Kawasaki, I was dispatched from another company. Â Since I was a “dispatch worker” I wasn’t issued any kind of security clearance. Â In fact I just had a goofy name badge that I was supposed to wear all day. Â I think I wore it for the first year I worked there, and then I became familiar to everyone there and it was no longer necessary.
At that time I always walked in the front entrance because I lacked the security clearance to go through the employee entrance. Â Actually, this was kind of nice. Â The front entrance is reserved for customers and that’s it – even vendors have to go around the back. Â I would stride in there every morning at 8 a.m. and wave to the security guys, who got to know me well. Â Then I flashed my goofy name badge to the receptionists working the desk each day (which was a little strange because they could certainly recognize me by sight).
This lasted for about a year or so, and then one of the receptionists told me that I didn’t need to produce the badge anymore. Â And eventually I started to go in the employee entrance with an actual security card.
But the point of all this is that during this time I made a lot of good relationships with the receptionists and the security guards. Â Now everywhere I go in the factory I’ve got a security guard calling out a greeting and being very friendly. Â I think this is pretty handy – just about any problem that I might have would involve a security guard showing up. Â It’s good to be a familiar face around there, especially considering there are about two thousand workers running around. Â Sometimes it is good not to blend in.
