It’s very important for schools to be safe and secure during the day while students are there and after hours.

Imagine working at a school after hours leading a team that is responsible for cleaning and security. If you knew the alarms didn’t always activate correctly on the first try, would you push back if you were told to call someone every time this happened, or would you simply comply and see how they like all the phone calls?

In today’s story, one supervisor decides to follow orders and see how it plays out. Read on to see what happened.

Report ALL the incidents, they demanded…

I am a site supervisor who oversees a team of ten – we are responsible for the after-hours cleaning in a high school.

Generally, my team report any damage/graffiti they find and although it’s not technically part of my role, I’ll assist hirers who have rented the site facilities for sports and the like.

Nothing major, I swipe them in if they’ve got issues with their access cards or dish out directions.

I’m also responsible to ensure site security at the end of each shift – which was up until recently basically alarming the buildings.

The school grounds are open to the public.

Most schools in my state (South Australia) are gated and therefore fully secured once the main six-foot gate is secure.

This site is not gated, and is accessed by the general public. There are almost always people cutting through the grounds or walking their dogs on the ovals.

All good. I do my job, alarm the site and go home.

This sounds like a big problem.

A few weeks back, it was discovered that a student had somehow gotten ahold of a swipe card which gave them access to the site after hours.

They’d allegedly had this card for almost a year and managed to get away with it – though how isn’t clear since I alarm the bulk of the site, save areas that are hired out beyond my finish time.

The end result of this discovery has basically been a huge overhaul of security protocols and a crack down on alarming.

He was given a new procedure to follow.

I was given direction that at the end of each shift, I was to alarm the site as usual however if any buildings didn’t alarm that I knew should have, I had to then complete two additional steps; contact Police Security and inform the Facility Leader immediately.

I finish at 8PM. The F.C’s work day ends at 4PM and she’s not particularly keen on being disturbed after hours…

However the instructions were clear; any incident had to be reported to her.

The site is old, the alarm system is sensitive and frankly, it’s a daily occurance that a building won’t alarm for some reason, or a hirer will access an area they’re not technically supposed to be in. And F.C knows this, or I thought she did.

He had to call every day of the week.

Monday night, I have to call Police Security and her.

Tuesday, same.

All week, there was always something that prior to all the changes, I would log in a book that F.C would sign off on the next day.

By Friday, she’s snippy with me. Sighing, tutting, that sort of thing.

He had to call on the weekend too.

But then my weekend crew had a few issues and, as I was supposed to, I reported them. Or tried to.

F.C didn’t take any of my calls.

Monday morning rolls around again and I get called into a meeting…

F.C has decided that we will revert back to the old system as she didn’t appreciate all the calls nor did she appreciate Police Security emailing her asking why the ‘cleaner keeps lodging nightly reports’.

But what happened with the student with the swipe card? I bet that student was pretty proud of getting away with having it for so long!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person would add a specific phrase when calling.

Texts aren’t as annoying.

This person has a question about schools in Australia.

Annoying rules often don’t last very long.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.