By Gerald, Senior Resident Gecko, Loading Bay B, Level Basement 1 As told to pakguard.online
I have lived on this wall for three years.
In gecko years, that is a considerable tenure. Long enough to have outlasted four security companies, two management changes, one very dramatic pest control visit that I do not wish to discuss, and approximately forty-seven guards who have come and gone through this loading bay like ships passing in the night.
I have seen things.
Oh, I have seen things.
Allow me to introduce myself properly. My name is Gerald. I did not choose this name — it was given to me at approximately 3:17am on a Tuesday by a guard named Azlan who had been on midnight shift for six hours and had apparently reached the stage of the night where naming geckos felt like a perfectly reasonable use of his time and emotional energy.
I did not object. Gerald is a dignified name. I have grown into it.
I live on the wall beside the loading bay door, just below the flickering fluorescent light that facilities management has been meaning to replace since sometime during the previous administration. The light attracts insects. The insects attract me. It is a simple arrangement and I am content with it.
But it is the guards who have truly made this wall worth living on.
On The Subject of Midnight Rounds
Every guard who has ever done a midnight shift has, at some point, walked past my wall. And every single one of them reacts differently.
There is the Veteran — the guard who has done so many midnight shifts that the darkness holds no mystery for him anymore. He walks past, glances at me, nods once, and continues. We have an understanding, the Veterans and I. A mutual respect between two creatures who have both learned to make peace with the night.
Then there is the New One. You can always tell the New Ones by the way they hold their torch — gripped with both hands, pointed at every shadow like they are expecting the shadow to point back. When they first see me, there are two possible reactions. The first is a sharp intake of breath followed by three very quick steps backwards. The second — and I respect this one more — is a moment of stillness, a slow exhale, and then a whispered “relax, it’s just a gecko.”
Both reactions are understandable. I am, objectively, quite sudden.
But it is the third type of guard that I find most interesting — the one who stops. The one who, at 3am on a quiet night with nothing but the hum of the basement ventilation system for company, actually pauses at my wall and just… looks at me.
These are the ones who name me. These are the ones who come back, round after round, to check that I am still there. These are the ones who, I suspect, are not entirely sure whether they are keeping me company or I am keeping theirs.
For the record — it is mutual.
On The Subject of The Logbook
I have spent considerable time observing guards filling in the logbook at the loading bay checkpoint, and I have come to the conclusion that the logbook is one of the great creative writing exercises of the modern security industry.
“1:45am — Rounds completed. All clear.” “2:30am — Rounds completed. All clear.” “3:15am — Rounds completed. All clear.”
All clear. Always all clear. Every entry, without variation, “all clear” — written in the careful handwriting of someone who is doing their absolute professional best to record events accurately while also being approximately seventy percent asleep.
I would like it noted, for the record, that at 2:47am on the fourteenth of last month, a cat entered through the loading bay door, knocked over a mop, sat down in the middle of the corridor with the calm authority of a building inspector, and left of its own accord eleven minutes later.
The logbook says: “2:45am — Rounds completed. All clear.”
I am not judging. I am simply noting that “all clear” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this industry.
On The Subject of Phones
I have observed that the relationship between a midnight shift guard and his phone goes through very distinct stages over the course of a single night.
Stage one, early evening: the phone is a source of entertainment. Messages, videos, the occasional game. The guard is relaxed. The phone is a companion.
Stage two, around midnight: the phone becomes a clock. It is checked every few minutes with increasing frequency, as though the act of checking it will somehow accelerate the passage of time. It will not. But hope, I have learned, is a resilient thing.
Stage three, the small hours: the phone becomes a lifeline. A connection to a world that is currently asleep but will, eventually, wake up again. A text to a wife. A photo of a child, opened and looked at for a long moment in the blue light of the loading bay. A brief video call to a parent in a kampung somewhere, whispered so as not to disturb the silence of the building.
These are the moments I look away from. Not because they are not worth watching — but because some things are private, even for a gecko.
On The Subject of Food
Every guard brings food to the midnight shift. This is a universal constant, as reliable as gravity and considerably more interesting.
I have, over the years, been in the vicinity of nasi lemak eaten cold from a plastic bag at 1am, instant noodles prepared in a Tupperware container with hot water from the pantry kettle, an entire tupperware of leftover rendang that filled the entire loading bay with a smell so magnificent that I briefly considered evolving taste buds, and, on one memorable occasion, a full packet of durian consumed with the quiet, guilty pleasure of a man who knows exactly what he is doing and has no regrets.
The durian guard — his name was Faizal, and he has since moved on to a different posting — was a visionary. A man of conviction. The loading bay smelled of durian for four days. Facilities management was baffled. The logbook said: “All clear.”
On The Subject of What I Have Learned
Three years on this wall have taught me many things. But the most important thing I have learned about security guards is this:
They care more than anyone knows.
Not in a loud way. Not in a way that announces itself or asks for recognition. They care in the way of people who show up — night after night, shift after shift — to a job that the world largely takes for granted, in a building full of people who will never know their names, doing work that only becomes visible when something goes wrong.
I have watched them in the quiet hours when no one is looking. I have seen the ones who do their rounds properly even when they are exhausted, because they understand that their tiredness is not the building’s problem. I have seen the ones who find a homeless man sheltering near the loading bay on a cold night and quietly look the other way, because some rules have an asterisk. I have seen the ones who stop at my wall at 4am not because they are lonely — though perhaps they are — but because even a gecko on a wall is something alive in all that silence, and sometimes that is enough.
I am just a gecko. I have no uniform, no radio, no logbook to fill. I contribute nothing to the security of this building except perhaps the occasional insect removed from circulation.
But I am here, every night, on my wall.
And so are they.
— Gerald, Loading Bay B, Basement 1 Senior Resident Gecko and Unofficial Mascot, pakguard.online
pakguard.online — by guards, for guards.
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