This store is right next door to the the Fox Tower main lobby, which provides access to a lot of businesses and services on its lower levels. Last Friday (10/17), I was at the Pearson Vue Testing Center taking a super exhausting all day test, and decided to stand out front for my lunch break right at the edge of the Marios Window, because a maintenance man was working under the Fox Tower awning on a scissor lift.
First, the security guard working at Marios at the time came over and bothered me, asking me rude and presumptuous questions about my physical and mental state. Offering to "call me an ambulance" in what I assume was an attempt to chase me off like some sort of vagrant, as I stand there quietly eating a snack from my lunch bag out of the way of any doorways. No tent, no trash, no tin foil, no holes in my clothes, and not bothering anybody on the PUBLIC sidewalk.
Then I watched him walk to the other side and harass some other lady taking a phone call on her cellphone, also not a vagrant, also on the PUBLIC sidewalk. All while he has a huge knife strapped to his belt in a sheathe.
I understand the state Portland can be in sometimes, I live here, I understand there is likely an image to protect, and I understand he was trying to do his job, but Marios, please tell your security guard to RELAX. And maybe read the room.
He does not need to be bothering passerby like he is, and he has some work to do to learn how to spot a threat in small and passive metropolitan city, during lunch hour, surrounded by office buildings, on a public sidewalk.