The Missing Plywood and the Supervisor's Instruction
You are the gate guard at a plywood factory. At the 06:00 shift change, the outgoing guard tells you that 14 sheets of plywood are missing from the loading bay. At 09:20 your security supervisor tells you to write the incident report, since you were on the gate the previous evening. Your notebook shows: 18:05, tempo AS-01-BC-4411 entered with a glue delivery; 19:52, the same tempo left; the driver gave you a cold drink and said the gate pass 'would come later.' You recorded that no gate pass was shown, but you did not stop the tempo because the loading-bay in-charge waved it through. The CCTV screen in the gate cabin runs 22 minutes ahead of your wrist watch, which you had checked against the control-room clock at 07:00. Another guard says, 'Write that the pass was shown, or we both get suspended.' The supervisor says the report must go today and should 'not be too detailed.'
1. Set out what your report says and what it leaves out.
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Include, chronologically, with the timing source stated up front: 'Times below are from my wrist watch, checked against the control-room clock at 07:00 on this date. The gate-cabin CCTV screen runs 22 minutes ahead.'
- 18:05 - tempo AS-01-BC-4411 entered with a glue delivery.
- 19:52 - same tempo at the gate to leave. No gate pass was produced.
- The loading-bay in-charge, named, signalled the vehicle through; the driver said the pass 'would come later' - quote it.
- The cold drink offered and accepted - disclose it. A gift at the moment of an unchecked exit is relevant to integrity, and hiding it destroys your credibility if it surfaces later.
- What you did and did not do, plainly: you noted the exit but did not stop the vehicle because the bay in-charge had waved it through.
Leave out: any conclusion about who removed the plywood; the figure 14 as your own finding - attribute it to the outgoing guard by name; opinions about the supervisor; any remark on anyone's community or caste.
2. How do you deal with the 22-minute clock difference and the request to write a false entry?
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The clock: the offset does not make your record unreliable, provided you state your source. Give your watch time and, separately, the screen time, and name the offset, so an investigator comparing the footage with your notebook does not find a contradiction where there is none. Do not adjust the cabin clock yourself before the footage is exported - that looks like tampering. Ask the supervisor in a message to have the clock corrected after the export, and note that you asked.
The false entry: refuse. 'Write that the pass was shown' conceals a theft, and the person who signs is you. A false entry in a security register can amount to fabricating evidence, and it is your name on the page, not the other guard's. Say no once, clearly, in front of a witness; record in the register that you were asked at 09:25 and by whom; and inform the agency's area manager, because a supervisor asking for a false record is a PSARA compliance matter, not a private quarrel.
Keep every notebook page. Do not tear out or rewrite the 19:52 entry.
3. What separates a report that survives an inquiry from one that does not?
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- Contemporaneous. Written the same day, from the notebook, not reconstructed a week later when the story has been discussed.
- Unaltered. Errors struck through with a single line and initialled, never overwritten or whited out; pages numbered; no gaps that can be filled in later.
- Traceable. Every fact carries its source - the outgoing guard's statement, the CCTV, the gate register, the bay in-charge. Names and designations, not 'the staff'.
- Quantities quoted, not calculated. '14 sheets, as stated by the outgoing guard' beats a figure you worked out yourself.
- No adjectives and no conclusions. 'The driver appeared nervous' is opinion; 'the driver's hands were shaking and he looked at the gate repeatedly' is observation.
- Received. Keep a copy and get an acknowledgement from the supervisor. A report that was written but never received protects nobody.
- Evidence preserved. The notebook page, the tempo's challan, the cold-drink bottle if opened. If the plywood is later traced, the chain of custody must be unbroken.
- Consistency. Your register entry, your written statement and the CCTV must tell one story. A single mismatch gives an investigator grounds to doubt all of it.