I'm Telling Mom!

So correct me if this isn't about some of the stupidest crap you have ever heard in your life.

The rec yard has been covered in snow and ice for the past week. Subzero temperatures. The locks were freezing shut.

We got a little rec done earlier in the week, up to the night when it started snowing. After that, it was too cold and too dangerous to go out there. Hell, I was slipping and sliding and I get to wear good boots with good tread on them. The offenders only get to wear shower shoes. Do you know how slippery those things get when it's cold?

On thursday the wind was blowing the snow around so hard we couldn't clear the yard. One of the dormworkers and i tried to clear a path and an hour later there was an inch of snow on it again.

So we said "No rec. Too dangerous."

On friday it was still bitter cold and we still couldn't get a good path out to the rec cages, so the Captain called down and said "No rec. Too dangerous."

Is there any part of the phrase "too dangerous" that seems ambiguous? If you slip and fall on the ice with your hands cuffed behind your back, you are either going to land on your face, breaking your nose or on the cuffs, breaking your wrists.

Either way, it's just not good.

On saturday morning when day shift did phone calls, some idiot inmate called their mother and cried because they weren't getting any rec this week. The aforementioned idiots mother called the prison and complained because her idiot son wasn't getting his recreation while he was in the hole.

The call was passed on to the duty officer ( I won't go into that ) who panicked and demanded that we get rec done. She (the duty officer) called multiple times to the Hive and finally talked to BG and asked if rec was going to get done.

He said "No."

Well, that didn't go over very well.

The next thing anybody knows the Warden Himself is walking through the door asking about rec. They want BG to get started as soon as possible. As soon as count cleared, they were demanding that he get started.

Hell, they hadn't even fed the house yet!

As soon as they finished feeding and kicking the trays, they sent down two yard dogs and told BG that nothing was going to get done besides rec that night.

Normally we take eight out at a time and they come and go as a group. Saturday night they brought eight out and as soon as two or three of them got cold and demanded to go in, they took them in and brought out two or three more to take their place.

The recreation assembly line. And officers and inmates running back and forth from the rec yard to the cells just as fast as they got their little piddies cold. They did the entire house twice in three hours. Running about like the Keystone Cops.

Needless, hopeless, reckless and totally not within policy. Stupid.

It only needed one thing to go bad and somebody's tit would have been in the wringer. Some inmate getting stupid or falling down and the whole thing would have fallen apart faster than a Sarah Palin for President campaign.

Luckily, nothing happened.

If the weather had been nice, they would have never pulled it off.

So how many mommies are going to call and complain when day shift takes over rec? And how are we going to pick up the slack with only two officers in the house?

And you know what? We don't get paid anywhere near enough to put up with this crap.