Just Pure Laziness

I can understand laziness. Everybody wants to "take it easy" now and then.

I do it.

You do it.

We all do it now and then.

But not all the time. Laziness is one of the reasons we have so many people in prison right now. They all wanted to take the easy route to get what they wanted rather than working for it.

And solving all of your problems by being lazy isn't going to make them go away. Eventually, you are going to have to pry your overly large butt out of that recliner and DO something.

One of ours got hurt at work the other night. He probably won't be back. Not because anybody did anything particularly wrong, but their solution is just pure-d dog boned laziness.

The officer in question was on midnight shift out in a little guard shack in the middle of one of the yards. Apparently, he had a stroke. Nobody knows for sure how long he laid there before an inmate spotted him and reported it. Luckily for him, the inmate didn't take advantage of the situation. You know what I mean.

So their solution, in their infinite wisdom....... is to have the control center call over the radio and speak to every single person on the camp who is carrying a radio. Once per shift. Just to make sure that they are okay.

That takes about forty minutes on day shift. A little less on evenings and even less on midnights. They want to call once in an eight hour shift and check on you.

WTF?

And what happens if someone is in trouble while they are tying up the radio for forty minutes?

"Wait. Don't stab me just yet. The radio is all tied up."

I don't know about the other shifts and the other yards and houses. But down here in the Hive we look out for our own. If we don't see somebody for ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch, we are out looking for them. Because we got each others backs down here.

I feel safe knowing that if my Sarge doesn't know where I am and the bubble officer can't see me then somebody is going to come looking for my sorry butt. If nothing more than to chew me out for scaring them.

We have got supervisors here. We are lousy with them. Some days we are hip deep in supervisors.

The word "supervisor" comes from the older term "overseer". One who watches over the workers.

We, as officers, watch over the inmates. The supervisors are supposed to be watching over us. If they would get out of their comfy office chairs once in a while and actually supervise their officers, that man might have gotten medical care much sooner.

I don't know. For all I know his Sarge may have just left the area when he keeled over. It might not have made a difference at all.

But their solution is no solution.

The only way that they can assure that all of the people who work in this prison are safe at their jobs is to get up and physically check on them several times during the shift.

Think that's gonna happen?

Nah, me neither.