How would you recongize an attacker?, page 2

Part of our annual required training involves how to deal with potentially violent customers. I work in a large metropolitan hospital and, like your office, many of the people who come in here are stressed and emotionally on edge to begin with. I would expect that someone coming in with a cold calculated plan to attack the place would be a lot less likely than someone coming in and just losing their cool after not getting the answer they are looking for.

This gives you a small advantage in that you should be able to see and detect the rising level of frustration in the potential attacker's demeanor. It also gives you a few options on how to handle the situation. If someone's anger level seems on the verge of getting out of control you can always do the "Let me see if I can get one of the supervisors to come help you" trick as an excuse to make your way away from the front desk and into the relative security of the back office for a quick call to the police.

One of the things they urge us to do is to arrange a code word amongst the people in the office so that you can let your coworkers know that there is a potential problem developing. That way one of them can alert the security guards and/or police with less chance that the troublemaker will catch them doing it. Something like "Oh Jan?.....Is there any of that cheesecake left in the back?"

Unfortunately, unless your state has laws especially permitting it, you will probably be fired for bringing a gun into the office if office policies forbid it. Concealed weapons laws often do not grant you the right to carry firearms into the workplace. For that reason a gun is usually not a practical weapon for security in the office. Since the angry client is not bound by such restrictions, you must assume that under that large hoodie there might indeed be a gun. You are therefore outgunned with most any weapon you might reasonably possess in the office. You can't depend on a weapon to save you. You will have to use your wits for that.

Good luck.

p.s. One sure tipoff is if someone leaves angry, then returns within just a few minutes. That's a sure sign that they had to go get their gun from the car.........

[edit on 1-4-2010 by total_slacker]