Monday, Here We Go in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

Oh boy, here we go! This week I need to cancel an appointment, meet a friend for dinner, do a phone interview, pack for a trip, and drive across Iowa on Friday. Monday I need to get as many housing units through as possible. Granted, I suppose I don’t absolutely have to. But my boss’s boss is an absolute dickhead and I need him to make the contacts to cover the houses that don’t go through. So… Monday: as many housing units as possible. Tuesday: as many as possible; while still having a court appearance, a phone meeting, and a scheduled dinner. Wednesday: as many housing units as possible and as many kites as possible, plus trying to convince my Boss’s Boss why he needs to do his job and get the rest of the units taken care of. Then… Thursday? I can sleep, pack, and do my phone interview. Friday morning: begin the long drive to hang out with a friend I’ve not seen in a while.

I awoke with a heavy heart and a self-curse on my lips. In my dreaming state, I again resigned myself to regret. Dreaming of a world that could have been, that almost was, but by choice and by fate had been barred from me these last 13 years. Strange. With all the things going on now… both professionally and personally… it seems odd (sometimes maddening) that my brain continues to look to the far past with regret and loss. There’s more than enough to feel regret about in the now. But maybe that’s the issue. This repeated concept that every decision I’ve ever made was the wrong one. Perhaps that is what it all means.

WORK

Frankly, as expected, the Weekend Help could only get through 4 housing units. This despite the fact that they have much more access to the cells and inmates. More shit that boggles the mind. Get paid twice as much, get twice as much access, four times as much training… is expected to do half as much. And when any of this is brought up to superiors? Direct Quote: “Life isn’t fair! Some people get paid more. Get over it.” ::eye roll:: Whatever, Douche. So I have to get three housing units through today just to be caught up with last week. As I write this, the bell tolls (but not really) 0830. I plan on being here until 2100. Let us discover how much paperwork and how many housing units I can burn through in a 12.5 hour shift!

Additional Work Tid Bits:

• Funny thing. I get that the Higher Ups have no understanding of the paperwork they expect. I understand that they don’t give a shit that more than one person needs to work this department. But… part of the paperwork is keeping track of things. Last week alone we did 4% of the entire YEAR’S number of inmates through here. So they know we’re getting more people than ever. Call me crazy but… that certainly seems like a good reason to have (1) more than one person in this job; (2) more than simply a “borrowed part timer” for this job; and (3) someone who has at least a modicum of training.

• It has been 35 minutes since I called a Mod and they aren’t here yet. Part of me wants to stress out because I have so much to do… but the other part of me thinks… good. When I have to e-mail my douchiest boss with how much work I got done this week, this helps show him that each mod takes up to (or more than) 2 hours. So, as he sits in his shit judging us and saying “Only one part-timer is needed” for this job… maybe he’ll get to see why one part-timer isn’t sufficient for an (at minimum) 60 hour job!

• Speaking of Douche-Bosses; Work Crush is already starting this week out SUPER pissed. She is a 3rd year law student. She is also a supervisor in Pretrial. However, one of our douche-bosses went on vacation to Thailand this week and dumped all of his week’s work onto Work Crush. Excuse me, what?! How do these 6 figure salary making assholes keep getting away with this shit?

• Knowing that Boss1 is a spineless weakling who assigns all of his failures to his staff… and knowing that Boss2 is a psychopath who demands that everybody else constantly makes him look good… I’m angry that I’m in this position. Their behavior literally drove two employees to quit in the same week and they’ve done nothing to fix it other than put me in their position and told me to do all of the work but for half of the reward.

• I am faced, at shift change, with a perplexing dilemma. When I arrived to work this morning, my lists of Inmates to Call Down had not repopulated. Not entirely unexpected as we still had Mods to call down from last week. But here is where it gets complicated. Mods for last week are finished! The list still hasn’t repopulated. As I have quite the schedule this week, this is only one of two work days where I can dedicate an additional 6 hours of labor. My conundrum, then, is.... do I (a) call down Mods and count the hours of those Mods knowing that my Inmate Request Lists haven’t repopulated? or do I (b) go home, enjoy an unexpected interruption into a day I assumed would be far more difficult and simply shrug off those things of which I have no control? After asking Work Crush and some other colleagues, I decided to do what may ultimately be called a stupid thing but I honestly believe to be the most honorable choice. I did my Emergency Interviews, checked to see if the system had repopulated (it hadn’t) and called it an early day. Quite possibly, incredibly stupid. If I so wanted, I could go through and cross off almost a dozen housing units because I have zero Law Library requests from them. And I know many people who would do that. But I can’t. Not yet. If, after tomorrow, there are still no inmate requests? Fine. But I just feel it would be a shitty thing to do to game the system that hard. Besides… if I cross off dozens of mods now… all those requests would just accumulate over the next 8 days and I would have THAT many more people to deal with next week. This is one of those many opportunities in life where I feel like I’m doing the stupid thing, while also feeling like I’m doing the right thing.
  

Not a work tid bit but… yeah, Work Crush just skyrocketed in my estimation. She went to a Halloween Party as Cheryl Tunt from Archer. I love Archer. I love Cheryl. It is no secret that I find Cheryl one of the best female characters in the show. Algernop Kreiger being one of the best male characters. That isn’t enough to have made her skyrocket though. Because… anyone can throw on a Cheryl Tunt costume. Work Crush wanted to do the bruises around the neck. Uhm… so taking a cosplay to the level of the character and wanting to do it well? :D

Sooooo… not sure how many people read through all of my constantly repetitious griping about the jail but.... here’s a tid-bit: I am catching up and reading many of you while I wait for the damned sloth-like COs. However, I’ll admit that it isn’t going as fast as I would have otherwise anticipated. Because.... frankly… I’ll read a lot and then… stop reading. Because I’ll get angry about this place. Or I’ll get distracted by a scuffle. Which reminds me… this didn’t happen on MY shift but a year before I came to the Law Library… a fight broke out inside the Law Library where one inmate (no hyperbole this comes directly from the incident report) reached his left hand down to the scrotum of the other inmate, vigorously grabbed the scrotum of the inmate, squeezed and twisted while performing a pulling motion. Severe tearing has been reported and medical has been alerted.