Are You A Good Cop Or A Bad Cop?

What with the bad press we get anyway and the fact that the testing to be become a corrections officer isn't really all that rigorous, we do tend to draw our fair share of nutbags here.

Plus you have got to be either really desperate or at least a teensy bit mentally off to want to work here in the first place.

So we shouldn't be all that surprised at some of the people we find wearing this uniform.

Some of us are really really strange.

But occasionally one of our staff will finally fall off of the deep end and do something so stupid as to get themselves "escorted off the property." Which is pretty much the same thing as getting fired right there on the spot. It just takes a little longer to do the paperwork.

There was one kid who used to work here that we all referred to as Nosehair.

I know..... it's nasty. But it fit him.

Anyway, we were all wondering how long it was going to take for him to do something stupid enough to get shown the door. He would get close, but never quite step over that line. He lasted much longer than we thought. Long enough that most of us had pretty much forgotten about him and his peculiar anglo-saxon ways.

Then a week or so ago he went completely postal and threatened his supervisor. As a matter of fact, he threatened to kill his sergeant. Even worse, he threatened to kill his sergeant in front of several witnesses.

Well, that got him escorted off the property, all right. And since they were trying to keep it quiet, the news was of course all over the camp in seconds. It was a hot topic of discussion for hours afterwards. But I think it was Chuck who first voiced the tiny thought that had been lurking in the back of our subconscious minds.

"What if he snaps and comes back with a gun?"

Uh-oh.

That was just not a good feeling walking out to the parking lot, lemme tell you! Especially since the thing in Fort Hood was so fresh in our minds. Chuck and I were dodging from tree to tree and ducking behind cars and skittering as fast as we could.

And, truth to tell, it wouldn't have surprised me all that much. The kid has square marbles rolling around in his head.

I always say if they let the pshrinks at us, they wouldn't allow any of us to work here. But maybe letting them take a gander at the new hires wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

It's bad enough we have to keep an eye on Them. I don't want to have to keep an eye out for Us as well. Know what I mean?