“PLEASE cooperate with the security check,” Gong Qin says as she extends her right arm, trying in vain to stop the hordes of commuters scurrying toward the Metro turnstiles for access. The 45-year-old Shanghai native is a Metro security inspector at the People’s Square station, one of the major transport hubs in Shanghai, where three Metro lines meet and passenger numbers top 500,000 a day.

Altogether there are 4,765 uniformed inspectors like Gong in Shanghai. Their daily drudgery is to implore passengers to submit baggage, backpacks and tote bags for security checks, to avoid banned items from being carried onboard Metro trains. Banned items include gasoline, alcohol, restricted knives, firecrackers and a long list of other flammables. The checks are done either manually or by a machine similar to an X-ray scanner.

Called names

Gong has been an inspector for two years. However politely she urges the passengers to undergo the checks, they usually rush past her, as if she didn’t exist. And her outstretched arm appears to be a shoddy line of defense in the face of the oncoming traffic. Being ignored isn’t the worst of it. More often than not, Gong falls on the receiving end of a volley of invectives if she insists on compliance with the security check. “I often get called names, sometimes a moron, occasionally a dog, a lousy security inspector, even worse,” Gong says.

“Once an intransigent passenger called me a psychopath. I joked that I’d better see myself as one,” said Wei Weiqi, 21, a security inspector from Hubei Province. She works at the Xujiahui Metro station, another busy transit.

Decorum can evaporate vert fast at the Metro security checkpoints, which total 621 citywide. Gong is unaware of the thankless moniker the public bestows on her and her colleagues — “fortune cat,” usually made of clay, that keeps waving its arm. The nickname is inspired by the similarity between their movements.

“I have to do this (raise my arm), because it is a required part of my job, and the security cameras are there to make sure I do this, otherwise, there will be punishment,” said Gong.

Punishments come in various forms. Sometimes, the security company that employs Gong will send in plainclothes foremen carrying some banned items to deliberately test the inspectors. Failure to stop them will result in fines as high as 100 yuan (US$16) — their monthly pay is about 2,000 yuan — and other disciplinary measures, such as intensive training in recognition of banned items and being warned for negligence. Receiving four warnings in a year is grounds for getting fired.

Already under grave pressure from the employer, Gong said the public disrespect of her work bothers her even more. “We just do our duty, in the interest of public safety. Why can’t people understand us?” she said, a little exasperated.

Her exasperation is shared by Shi, a colleague working with Gong in a team of three. Each works a morning shift (6:30-14:30) for two consecutive days, then an afternoon shift (14:30-22:30) for two more days before taking two days off. They have to work on public holidays if it is their turn, even during the Chinese Spring Festival, when most other workers are home for the celebration. Those who happen to be on duty will bring potluck to share with colleagues.

Sense of responsibility

Declining to give her full name, Shi, 36, was born to parents who used to be cotton farmers working in the faraway Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Partly because of her status as the offspring of “educated youth” — referring to those who were sent to the countryside to study from farmers in the 1970s — she got to immigrate to Shanghai, the city of her parents’ origins and through the neighborhood committee’s help landed a job as an inspector. But merely half a year after she began, Shi has been sufficiently frustrated with the job to have thought about quitting several times.

“I insist on checking because I have a sense of responsibility. But I frequently got called an idiot for being responsible,” said the mother of a 9-year-old girl. She lives in Baoshan District, a 30-minute ride by Metro from the city center where she works, which means she often leaves and arrives home either too early or too late to see her daughter. “Maybe you are a law-abiding citizen, but you don’t know if others are carrying flammables that might endanger your safety,” Shi said.

Metro security check was first introduced in the run-up to the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. After the Expo, many expected to see it gone, but instead, it stayed, only to be strengthened.

“One can expect the security checks to tighten further, not ease in the future,” said Song Youguo, deputy director of the Urban Railway and Public Transport General Squad of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau. “Considering the huge Metro ridership, a combustible item might pose a tremendous risk.” He said many of Shanghai’s residents are bitterly ambivalent about the checks. “They don’t like it, but nobody wants to stand next to a canister of gasoline and firecrackers.”

In fact, popular definitions of banned items need to be broadened, which now comprise only gasoline, lacquer thinner or alcohol, said Song. Hydrogen balloons, nail varnish (in large quantities) and hair gel (more than two bottles) are officially considered combustibles as well, which are shown in dark blue on the screen of a scanner. Water, beverages and other types of liquid deemed safe are shown in orange. Those carrying “unsafe” liquids will be asked to take other public transport.

Since it takes five to seven seconds for a bag to go through the scanner, a thorough check of all the passengers’ belongings is out of the question, as it will lead to severe congestion and long lines, said Song. A compromise has to be struck between mandatory checks and overall convenience of Metro service. Therefore, the items required for checking currently are limited to luggage, backpacks and tote bags, said Song.

More than ‘formality’

In pointing to the perceived ineffectiveness of security checks, skeptics often cite the fact that saboteurs can hide combustibles on themselves, and inspectors cannot frisk passengers. Song acknowledged the loophole, and said that people could sneak in the Metro paid areas by dodging fares. “That is why checks have to be complemented with police patrol, random ID checks and sniff dogs,” he said.

But it would go too far to assert that the security checks are a useless, time-consuming “formality,” and he released figures to prove it has teeth. Last year, Shanghai authorities found and confiscated 33,686 banned items inside all of its Metro transit systems. Among these, gasoline and diesel totaled 2,749 liters. There were also 283,014 firecrackers, 419 replica guns and 10,465 restricted knives. Seventy-four people were taken into custody for refusing to comply with the checks.

However, the consistency of the security work is increasingly challenged by a high turnover and poor retention of employees, due to low pay, high pressure and personal insults the workers endure.

For inspectors with a Shanghai hukou, or household residency, their pay package is made up of 1,820 yuan, the local minimum income, and a few hundred yuan in perks, depending on their years of service. For those who hail from outside of Shanghai, they can earn about 3,000 yuan only by working overtime. On top of that, there is a year-end bonus for “model workers” of 300 yuan, and cash prizes conferred on those who confiscate banned items, usually 50 yuan or more a time.

Still, the constant slurs shouted at inspectors have deprived many of them of any sense of commitment to work.

Better incentives

“Those who quit might have the best work ethic and thus are the most disappointed, and quite a few among the rest who stay put might just be content with slacking off,” Song said, adding that better incentives must be created to retain motivated inspectors. But he declined to disclose the turnover rate, saying at least several hundred inspectors resign every year, and even that is a “conservative number.”

Many inspectors are calling for the municipal authorities to adopt more stringent standards governing security checks, so that they will not be left with the difficult choice about whom to single out for checks. It is this very direction that often pits them against passengers. And they urge the public to show more empathy for what they do.

Any little job satisfaction Gong at the People’s Square station gets is from the kind citizens who offer to open their tote bags or backpacks even before she asks them to do so.

“Those who carry flammables onboard Metro trains often are a minority, but whenever I confiscate such items, I feel I’m contributing to the safety of society and others,” said Wei, the inspector from Hubei.