jklinders said:
I'm sorry about your experience but I applaud the level headedness of your post.
Hindsight is always 20/20. In the heat of the moment you do not have that luxury. Too many armchair philosophers forget that.
I am happy to see that other people get this. It's just far too easy to make posts from your comfortable deskchair and describe how you would have handled the situation.
After my experience in the supermarket, I re-ran the entire event in my head hundreds of times, things I could have done different, things I should have done different, things I wish I've done different. Heck, one version had me kung-fu kicking the crap out of the robbers, but regrettably it doesn't work that way.
I had the entire police force present there telling me how good a job I did by alerting them, as far as they are concerned, it was text-book perfect. This counts for something, because as a manager I was responsible for the lives of the employees in my supermarket at the time and I was happy to find out that I did was the best thing I could have done. Even if at the time, I didn't put any thought into it at all. You just go with the moment.
The police are saying that this security guard reacted swiftly, decisively and stopped people from getting hurt (with the obvious exception of that one robber, but he made his own bed). That counts for a lot.
This is probably because of my own personal experiences, but robbers get zero sympathy from me. You wanna throw down with a security guard? Great, just be ready when you bump into one that is not a pushover.