Who's Who: Bob Pringle, Security Guard

Name:  Bob Pringle

Age: “I’m old enough to be your grandfather.” 

Occupation: Security guard at El Cerrito Plaza

And this is your fourth day here? This is my fourth day here, but I’ve been a security guard for about 16 months.

What brought you to this line of work? I’m retired, and it gets old just sitting in front of the television set. You can clean the house once a week, you can mow the lawn once a week, and then you’ve got nothing but dead time. Make your bed every day, shower and shave, all the basics, but after that, there’s not much else to do.

Some people say, “God forbid you ever retire.” In some ways that’s true. But it’s nice to be retired.

Do you find your new job entertaining? Do interesting things happen? Every day there’s something different. You check around—a door’s not supposed to be open and it opens and the alarm goes off all of a sudden. So then you’ve gotta call the police; you’ve gotta do your reports and everything else. And it’s amazing, the people–it’s not just some little place—it could be AT&T that doesn’t close their door. It could be some restaurant that doesn’t close their door—anybody.

So there’s door checks, there’s patrolling the area and also checking for shady characters? Yes. We cover all that. People call us on our security line. And I’ve got my phone with me. If it’s serious, I tell them to call 911 obviously. I can’t arrest anybody.

You’re kind of the eyes and ears of the Plaza? Right.

Have you lived in this area your whole life? Basically. I graduated from Richmond High. And you guys were our rivals. And Berkeley.

There’s some good restaurants around here though. Oh, the whole area’s got nice restaurants. This is kind of a mall type, but there’s still some good restaurants here. There’s o, s is always loaded, and does a good job. I mean, if you want something quick and get out the door.