Missed It By That Much!

That was a close one. Went in to work, on my Monday... always a drag. Stopped in the Admin building to sign in and see who I was working with. I picked up the chrono and said "Oh Snap!" loud enough that all of the broken people on light duty came out of their comas to look at me.

I just shook my head, threw the paper down and muttered "I KNEW I should have called out today!" and stormed out of the room.

In their infinite wisdom, they had scheduled not one, but two trainwrecks to be the floor officers today. What the hell were they thinking? One of tghem was a young punk kid who manages to pull off being arrogant and completely clueless all in the same maneuver. He's emotionally immature and extremely lazy. The other is an older (?) woman who has been with the department for years without apparently learning a thing. I suspect that they just let her sleep in the parking lot for eight hours a day at her other camp, because she acts like she has never been inside the fence before and she seems to have the learning capacity of an Idaho potato.

If I had compiled an actual list of people I never wanted working around me ever again, these two would have been real close to the top. And they scheduled them both to be there on the same day.

There can only be a few reasons behind them doing that to us:
1. They hate us. (Which is probable.)
2. They hate them. (Which is likely.)
3. They hate me personally. (I don't care either way on that.)
4. They hate the Hive. (Which is entirely true. We tend to create paperwork for them.)


I walked into the control center and COI Miz P (Sgt Miz P's other half) looked at me with those big eyes of hers and said "What will you do?" I shrugged and said "It's too late to call out now. I may just have to spray somebody."

So I go on down to the house and think "Well, we'll go do some rec and it will get my mind off of it for awhile, anyway." But when we get there Sgt Strings says "Hey, I'm short people so I need you guys to stay in just in case I might need you."

Well snap! Nothing to do but sit around and stew for an hour and try to think of some way to avert disaster if those two actually show up. The best think I could think of was locking them in the C-wing closet until count time. But that probably wouldn't have worked, anyway.

So I wait.

And at shift change I see a clot of officers coming down the walk and right in front is...... yep.... trainwreck #2. Oh snap. And behind her is Sgt Miz P and some tall lanky drink of water and it's.... the Cowboy! Yay! I don't think I was ever so happy to see him. It seems that trainwreck #1 had called out so they sent us a replacement.

So it was with a clear conscience that I left the Cowboy in charge of trainwreck #2 and told Sgt Miz P "If you need me, call me. Otherwise, I'll be hiding out on the rec yard."

And I did, too.

I would poke my head in long enough to make sure I didn't see any blood and nothing seemed to be on fire and I went back outside.

We survived. The Cowboy and the trainwreck managed to get through the night with no major disasters. I felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to take his place. That's the price you pay for being the new guy.

I think calling in was the only decent thing trainwreck #1 ever did.