The Speed I Prefer

Gate guarding has a lot of likable attributes. If not, we'd all go stark raving mad pretty quickly (maybe we will anyway). You have an opportunity to meet and socialize with a lot of people and probably will make more money than you ever would working out of your RV. However, no matter what they pay me, I have a speed I am comfortable with. It helps to be good with numbers and to be able to pick out a series and remember it. All this with more traffic and more info to record while your doing it. I consider my self to be pretty good with numbers, but my memory is not as sharp as it used to be. For us, the magic number is around 200 vehicles a day before we start contemplating bodily harm to ourselves or some innocent victim. I know there are some of you that regularly blow that number out of the water. If you're one of those super humans or aberrations that can knock out twelve pages a day or so; more power to you. I keep a piece of scrap paper on my clipboard all the time as a crib sheet. Even so, when traffic gets heavy and I forget a number or two, I start to freak out. My speed is to have the amount of vehicular traffic to be able to occasionally go inside the RV and decompress for a few minutes (sometimes longer) and return to the battle with a fresh perspective. The gates that require me to be out side in a state of constant readiness are just not my style. No time to pee, to cook, to clean, relax...you get the idea. We are now on a gate that rarely sees five minutes elapse before another vehicle hits the cattle guard. We are determined to make the best of it, especially since the pay is so good. Our boss told us that we would never look at a gate the same way after working an electrical contract and boy was he right. Our first stint with this company was on an electrical contract and boy did we get spoiled. We unlocked the gate in the morning to let the workers in and repeated the process at night. In between there was little traffic. Talk about an easy job! Now, if I could just find a gate that paid well at the speed I prefer...