Stupid Storms

Stupid thunderstorms have made my power flicker on and off twice so I'm just going to wish you a happy Alfred Hitchcock Day and get the snap off of here before my 'puter gets fried.

Good evening.....

I Felt Kinda Nekkid

What with this mild winter we've had so far it's been a strange year. Usually we have to spend at least a couple of weeks bundled up in multiple layers and adjusting our duty belts to accommodate the insulated coveralls.

I think I brought my coveralls once this winter but never put them on.

Today was supposed to be somewhere in the low 60's so this afternoon I transferred all of my junk to a short sleeve shirt and decided to forgo the long johns.

I felt nekkid.

In a way having on long sleeves and a hoodie under my coat and the layer of long johns on made me feel like I was wearing body armor.

As if I was insulated from more than just the weather. If you get my drift.

Today I felt kind of exposed and a tad vulnerable.

I was comfortable..... But it felt strange not to be all bundled up.

I know in a couple of months I'll be complaining about how freaking hot it is, especially inside some of those houses. Very few places have any sort of air conditioning that works. Mostly we have to rely on fans.

The three bears would never make it here in Raccoon City. It's always either too hard or too soft. There's just no room for "just right."

Sunday is going to be Johnny Appleseed Day and Worship of Tools Day as well as National Oatmeal-Nut Waffles Day.

This weekend I think I'll be out worshiping some of my favorite tools.

And don't forget to set your clocks! Spring forward!

I Almost Had To Do Something

Jeez... This whole Sergeant gig is making me lazy.

Aside from the fact that I spent an entire week sitting in class and eating two meals a day as opposed to my usual one, now I have people who do the things I'm used to doing and it's making me crazy.

If I want to do something myself I have to jump in there and do it quick before someone else does it for me.

When I work 25 house one of the first things that needs to happen is the 25 yard inner perimeter check or "IP" as we call it. You check the fences and all of the doors and gates and make sure everything is secure. It's not a bad little walk and it gets your blood moving first thing on shift.

I was going to go ahead and get it done while everyone was getting settled in their wings. But before I even got my stuff set down in the office Miz Fawkes and Miz Slim both started out in different directions and took care of it.

I know... I know... It's their job. I was just trying to be nice and help out. Miz Slim is always so on top of things there that I rarely get a chance to do anything more than count. But sometimes it's a little frustrating. I am still so used to being the guy that does the stuff.

That is hard to get used to.

I did get to make a call earlier in the evening, though. Our ice machines in the house broke down and the offenders had no ice in the wings.

I know... Poor darlings, right? But it is hot in those wings and we try to make sure they have ice available when we can.

Someone had said when that happened last year we took some offenders all the way up to 1 house and got ice from there. heck, that's half the way across the camp? Why not......

I called Main Production and said "Hey, can we come and get ice right before you shut down for the night? That way you have all night for the machines to fill back up again." To which they replied "Hey, no problem!" And Main Production is only about fifty yards away from here, rather than a quarter of a mile.

Then I called the Lt and told him what we were doing and why. They kind of appreciate it when we call them with solutions rather than problems.

So... problem solved. Was that so hard?

Is this what I'm here for? Really?

Okey dokey, then.

If you need me for anything further I'll be out walking laps around the building.

Saturday is going to be Festival Of Life In The Cracks Day, The International Day of Awesomeness, Fanny Pack Day and National Blueberry Popover Day.

I'm all up into Awesomeness. And Blueberry Popovers, too!

I Don't Care For Surprises

Getting surprised while working in a prison is rarely a good thing. Even being caught unawares or nonplussed can be extremely bad.

As you can well imagine.

We often get lulled into complacency by the "business as usual" routine of the place. Especially if things have been going well and smoothly for awhile. We forget that things can go bad very quickly and all it takes is one slip-up to make everyone have a very long evening.

I'm not sure what exactly happened this afternoon. Whether someone saw something or someone or if somebody left a gate open of if a piece of clothing got blown into the fence by the stupidly high winds we had today.

But about 3:30, just as soon as I got to my house and got a pot of coffee brewing they called on the radio and said "The yards are closed. Return all workers to their housing units and prepare for a name and number count."

Aw...... snap. The only reason they do that is if they think there is a chance that somebody escaped. Empty out the chow halls and main production. Close down rec and education. Bring the entire camp to a stop and make sure that we can account for every single inmate that we are supposed to have. Somewhere around 2800 of them, I believe.

Chase them all off of the yard. Chase them into the house and tell them to get ready for count.

What? I said get ready for count, fool! I didn't stutter!

We counted our house and had everybody we were supposed to have, fortunately. Then it was time to sit back and bite our nails and hope that everyone else knew how to count. This was definitely not a time to have a math error!

Fortunately whatever had happened didn't seem to actually involve an escape. It seemed that we had all of our little desperadoes safely tucked away where they were supposed to be.

Whew! I've never been here during an actual escape and the couple of attempts that we have had always happened on my day off.

Let's just keep it that way, shall we?

While I'm here I just want to hand out props to Coupe, for catching a problem and nipping it in the bud.

We have a good sized population of Spanish speaking inmates. Many of them speak only halting English and some of them speak it much better than they let on. I don't speak more than a few words of it myself so I rarely know what they are saying.

Coupe however, speaks fluent Spanish from his days down in Central America doing something that he won't talk about. Our very own version of G. Gordon Liddy.

At any rate, he overheard one of the inmates from my house call another officer an "old drunk" in Spanish down at the chow hall this evening. And he waited until he got back from chow to address the problem.

I didn't know about it until I heard them down the hall speaking in rapid Spanish. They weren't shouting, but Coupe sounded perturbed and the inmate sounded apologetic. Rather than get into the middle of it, I decided to wait and see what happened. I figured if they got to the "Ricky Ricardo" tone of voice then I'd step in and see if I could lend a hand or a decision.

But they never got there so I let it run it's course. Coupe dressed him down for insulting an officer and gave him some extra duty to work off to pay his penance.

He'd been upbraided for speaking Spanish to the offenders before. Probably by someone who couldn't understand it either. Me, I figured if he could get his point across to the offender clearly and forcefully by speaking Spanish then I didn't care if he was speaking Latin or sign language. As long as there was no problem afterwards and I didn't have to get involved, then it was a good thing. I was fine with it.

And I wish we had more Spanish speaking officers. I wish I had a talent for languages. But aside from knowing a few colorful insults, I got nothing.

So anyway, good job Coupe. You handled that well and didn't make me do any work. Points for you!

This is what... Tuesday? Yeah. My new Friday. Wheee! It's taking awhile to get used to that.

So here's the midweek weekend lineup:

Wednesday: National Crown Roast Of Pork Day, National Be Heard Day, National Math Day and Cereal Day.

Thursday: Be Nasty Day, International Women's Day, Nametag Day and National Peanut Cluster Day.

Friday: Panic Day, Barbie Day, Get Over It Day and National Crabmeat Day.

Remember! Don't eat cereal and drive!

At least, not at the same time...

Apparently They Are Expecting Change

Since we have had so much turnover lately it seems like there are changes in the wind.

A new Warden. A new Major. New Captains and Lieutenants. New FUM's and caseworkers. Not to mention that passel of new Sergeants wandering around like puppies looking for a bowl of milk.

And everybody new wants to step into a spot and say "I want to change things! I have plans!" So they set about fiddling with this and that and moving things here and there and churning out mighty memo's outlining what the future will be like.

They all approach it a bit differently. Some of them will point vaguely towards the sky and try to paint a rosy mental picture of what their future utopia will be like. Others will just say "This is how we did it in the place I came from. I'm the boss and this is how we'll do it. Or else."

We'll all sigh and go about our jobs and wait for it to pass. Those of us who have been around for awhile know that actual change in the Department of Corrections comes with the same gringing speed as continental drift.

No matter if it is a good idea or not, there is someone further up the chain who will always say "Nope. That's not gonna happen. Some inmates grandmother will be offended and we'll get sued. Put it back the way it was. We have been doing it this way since 1706 and we are not going to change it now."

And after a month or two of turmoil and dissension things will go back to the way they were. And we can go back to doing our jobs the way we have been doing them for years. It may not be the right way and it may not be the only way or the best way, but it's the way we've always done it and that's not going to change drastically any time soon.

They added a couple of new lines in our yearly performance ratings this year that have already caused some comment.

1. "When attempting to affect change offender's behavior uses positive reinforcements."
and
2. "In behavior and attitude, encourages offenders to adopt a commitment to the reentry process, modification of their behavior, and successful living."

Those lines seem to be leaning more towards a "kinder and gentler" form of incarceration. Or as we put it a "Hug-A-Thug" mentality.

Now I'm not really all that warm and fuzzy a kind of guy, even outside the fence. I'm more of the kind of guy they point to when all the fuzzy stuff doesn't seem to be sinking in and say "Behave yourself or Sgt Rev over there will spray you and plant you face down in the concrete and drag your sorry butt down to the Hive for a few months vacation."

Hey, we all have our strengths. Mine is being a misanthrope. It works for me.

And that's probably not going to change any time soon.

So... Tuesday.

Tuesday will be National Frozen Food Day, Namesake Day, Unique Names Day, US Snowshoe Day and National White Chocolate Cheesecake Day.

Now there's a holiday I can sink my teeth into!

I Got Who???

Ever since I got promoted I've been wondering who I was going to end up as "mine". If you are a regular housing unit Sergeant you have the people that work for you in that house. If you are the yard Sergeant you end up with your yard dawgs and a few extra people, like medical and food service, etc.

If you are a "relief" Sergeant like me and Archer and Banty, then you get all of the utility officers.

Things have been kind of up in the air with who we were going to get. Most of my people actually got assigned to someone else for the annual rating fiasco, which was fine with me. Poor Watcher got stuck with a bunch of midnight shift people who he never worked with and will play hob trying to catch up with to get them to sign their ratings.

Since I didn't get assigned anybody, I thought I got off pretty easy. But I kept on checking now and then just to make sure they didn't sneak anybody in on me at the last minute.

Bloody good thing I kept checking.

Tonight was my first night back at work and, as usual, I logged into the computer just to make sure my list was still empty.

To my immense surprise there were two names on my list of employees!

I looked at the names.

And then I looked at them again.

And I thought some.

And I looked at them again.

Finally I admitted defeat and said "Who the frack is that???"

I had absolutely no idea who these guys were.

Poking around in other places in the computer I found the orders placing them on third shift and making me their supervisor. Another file in a completely different program told me that they had transferred over from the camp up the road at the end of last month while I was out in training.

And one of them apparently hasn't had his annual rating completed yet. I'm guessing that since he was transferring whoever his last supervisor was just said "Frack it. Let them do it when he gets there." That's just typical.

I passed my questions about that to Lt baby Boy and he said he would ask the ladies in Personnel what his status was.

If I have to rate him for the year I hope he wasn't a complete screw up or a golden boy. Because either way he's going to end up getting straight 5's down the page. Just average. You passed. I don't even have a file I could look at. This guy is a blank page to me.

And I'm sure if I tried to call the prison up the road to get some input that I would get nothing. Nothing that would benefit my evaluation, anyway. And I couldn't base my evaluation on hearsay so it wouldn't do me any good to call.

What a joke, right?

What in the snap was I thinking??? I could have been happy.... Ah, well.

Monday is going to be Multiple Personalities Day, Casimir Pulaski Day, Fun Facts About Names Day and National Cheese Doodle Day.

And all of my personalities will have orange fingers....

The Week Of Supervisory Training

Wheee.... Well, that was fun. A whole week of going to bed too early and getting up too early and eating too much and sitting on my butt way too much.

That was just..... phenomenal. I got to spend a week of them telling me how hard and how much hassle being a Sergeant is going to be in the very near future.

And that was only the stuff they decided that I needed to know ahead of time.

Well, two months after the fact, but a glimpse of the future nonetheless.

I'll get to the picture above in a minute. Er... I plan to, anyway.

Days one and two were devoted to "Basic leadership Skills." A veritable smorgasbord of random information dished up to us by a very nice and engaging lady who managed to make this rather dry subject matter entertaining and informative.

If it wasn't for her, I would have slipped into a coma before the first break.

As it was, I spent alot of the time doodling on the graphics in the manual:

It was also a very good thing that both Drew and the Watcher were in the same class. We kept each other awake and alert and provided a measure of humor for the rest of the class. The instructor knew if she wanted a certain answer for a question she was asking she could look to one of us.

If she wanted a well reasoned but sometimes cautious answer, she'd ask Drew.

If she was looking for a more thoughtful and "deeper" answer, the Watcher was her man.

When she wanted the rougher gut-reaction and "don't do this" answer, she'd ask me. There always has to be at least one person in each class who gives the exact wrong answers. I usually volunteer for that position.

Anyway, the lady was wonderful. She kept us entertained and made us think for the whole week, which I'm sure was quite a feat. Even when we were all staring with mounting horror at sentences like: "Through analysis of the duties of the workplace, differentiate between technical and conceptual tasks and determine how to make the transition."

Yeah. They write like that. In some technical book factory somewhere for people with Masters degrees. Be darned if I knew, even now, what that means.

We learned about delegation and time management and giving feedback. And we took a self-assessment quiz that supposedly showed what our management style was.

I'm apparently an Amiable.

I don't see it, but there you are.

Days three and four were taken up by learning the computer system that we use for our annual ratings. Making that process interesting was a feat of superhuman strength. She should have been nominated for a Medal of Honor.

And today's topic was "Addressing Discrimination, Harassment and Retaliation in the Workplace."

Don't think that topic wasn't keeping us on the edge of our seats with glee.

Basically it all boiled down to "Report It, Report It, Report It! Because if you don't you'll leave yourself open for a lawsuit."

Reporting good. Lawsuit bad. Got it.

So during the week Watcher and Drew and I spent a good part of the time playing class clown. We were all given name cards for our places at the tables. Ours changed on almost a daily basis. Mine went from my name to "Rev" to "Arf" to "Here To Nose Sat". The second to the last day mine said "Watchers Dad."

An old joke. After second break I came in and found out my name had been changed to "Watchers Great Grand Daddy." I gave both of them the universal sign of disrespect.

On the next break I was looking at Watcher and Drew (and most of the rest of the class) and realized how young they really are. It was kind of depressing, in a way. And I wondered aloud "Should I consider it at least mildly depressing that I've gone from being Indiana Jones to being his dad?"

When they hassled me about being old I chased them back into the building saying "We named the dog Watcher!!!"

Hey, at least for a second there I thought I was Sean Connery. That second was long enough to make me feel better.

Anyway, it was long and tedious and too freaking early in the morning and it's over.

Huge sigh of relief.

Until the next time, anyway.

One day off and then it's back to my regular schedule. So here's the schedule:

Saturday: I Want You To Be Happy Day, Peach Blossom Day, National Anthem Day and National Cold Cuts Day.

Sunday: Holy Experiment Day, National Pound Cake Day, Benjamin Harrison Day and the International Scrapbooking Industry Day.

Really. Scrapbooking Industry. My wife will be so tickled.....