Armored Cheapskates

I just came across a “Help Wanted” ad for a major armored car company.
(No, I’m not looking for a job…it’s like a self-affirmation I occasionally employ, looking at all the miminum-wage jobs out there that actually pay less than my weekly pittance at the newspaper, reminding me that maybe I don’t have it so bad).
The ad was looking for armed guards and drivers.
The pay?
$9 an hour.
Unbelievable.
Whenever I think about armored cars (which, admittedly, is not very often), I envision the dramatic movie and TV scenes where the bad guys are taking down the driver and guards to empty out the cash.
Now, my vision is of gun-toting guys risking their lives, tooling around town in an uncomfortable truck surrounded by stacks and stacks of hundred dollar bills, knowing that at the end of the week their paycheck will cover almost a half month worth of of rent, as long as they don’t eat or put gas in their own car.
I’m a big advocate of honesty and honor, but it just seems to me that it would require incredible self-restraint to follow the straight and narrow while embedded with the temptation of a king’s fortune on wheels.
I can imagine the driver developing a twitch in his left eye every time he approaches that last interstate exit, with visions of grandeur and opulence enticing him if he would just keep going straight to some hideout down the road where he could off-load his treasure.
(Obviously I’m killing any future I might have had in the currency transportation industry with these confessions.)
There is also a reverse perspective for the armored car companies and the banks which use them:What kind of quality employee do you think you’re going to get for nine bucks an hour?
Really, for that kind of pocket change, when the bad guys show up with automatic weapons, my bet is the driver is going to open the back door, show them where the biggest denominations are kept, and help them load it into the getaway car (which the armed guard will notice is nicer than his personal vehicle waiting at the armored car garage employee parking lot).
Polite robbers would flip the guy a tip, maybe an errant stack of fifties that would equal about three months worth of salary.
The ad goes on to mention that you must have a clean driving report, no criminal record, a favorable credit rating, and pass a drug test.
Let’s be honest, I know ex-cons and parolees who wouldn’t settle for that kind of scratch, so how do they expect to lure top-quality clean cut high school graduates with the moral compass necessary to watch over someone else’s cash?
Sorry, as long as McDonalds needs night managers, the armored car business will continue to be on the lookout for decent employees.
As long as they continue to be tight-fisted, they’ll be short-handed.