What Time Is It?

This one little phrase "Hey CO! What time is it?" is almost invariably the first thing I hear when I arrive and the last thing I hear when I leave.

I counted one day. I got asked that question fifty-two times in eight hours. I think if someone was to come up to me on the streets and ask me that I would probably punch them in the eye.

They know what time it is. They know that I get there at the same time every day and I leave there at the same time every day. They know what time it is. They don't really care what time it is. It's just a way of trying to get me to acknowledge their existence. They just want some individual attention. I understand that in my brain but it still drives me nuts.

I've gotten to the point where I don't answer most of the time. I just tune them out into the general background noise like they never even spoke. I'm seriously thinking about losing my watch altogether so I'll just wave my bare wrist and shake my head.

It did get to me once, tho.

I'd already had a bad day for one reason or another (use of force, paperwork, I dunno) and I was already in a crabby mood. I was walking through the wing and maybe ten offenders had asked me the question and even though I had answered it ten times in an increasingly loud voice this one numbnuts decided he just had to ask me again what time it was. I went up to his door and said "Why? Does it matter? Do you have a date? Are you going somewhere? Is there a bus coming? Is a bomb fixing to go off? Are you going to miss your plane? Is anything important at all going to happen this afternoon? Does it make you feel any better that even though you are going to spend the next ten years in prison a measly ten minutes have passed since the last time you asked me? Is it really that freaking important to find out that it is two-freaking-thirty in the afternoon that you are willing to piss me off this bad? Is it that freaking important?"

He just looked at me with kind of a shocked look and said "Sorry."

On the upside, nobody in that wing asked me the question for the rest of the evening.

Maybe I should do that more often. Do you think?