Apartheid legacy
This happened in the nineties, right? When apartheid was still a thing, and well, TBH it still is, in terms of the attitude of many security guards.
Black people in SA (security guards here are 99.9% black) had been told for generations - well, hundreds of years, if you analyse it - that white people were superior to them. So even when that sort of discrimination was being dialled back, and Security was told that they have a position of (nominal) jurisdiction over *everyone* in certain areas, they would and often still do kowtow to anyone with a white skin, or indeed with an air of authority. So the response that they "thought the auditors were just people who had lost their ID tags" is 100% in line with a lifetime of experience here.
And yes, security guards tend to be lazy. You would be too on a 72-hour working week (not kidding. Twelve hours a day, 6 days a week) at minimum wage. They are largely ornamental.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
