ratsonjulia

back to work tonight.

for a good chunk of last week I found myself in the Infirmary Cage, which is a rotten place to work if you smoke (I do) but not so bad if one has had the foresight to secrete a good book or two on one's person or in ones lunchbox.

the infirmary cage is, in fact a cage at the entrance of the Infirmary. you're locked in for eight hours with the little buttons for popping doors & a coffeepot.

approximate re-creation of my first night there, a few weeks ago:

since moving to graveyard (& to 8-hour shifts, as opposed to the 12's we'd been working for most of my time there) getting to work has been a bit less harried & I'm usually 45-minutes early, scrubbed, shaved & sober.

at about 8:15 arrive at gatehouse--put lunchbox, duty-belt & coat on table for a perfunctory search by Squad. give car keys to gatehouse officer & am greeted with "Hey there, Sanchez!"

(carkeys are exchanged for a little round brass chit with a number stamped on it, identical to the chit affixed to the keyring. when I first started there the chit that I'd been assigned had belonged to an officer named Sanchez who'd transfered to a prison in the southern part of the state a week or two before I started. "Sanchez" was still written on a little strip of paper glued to the chit. it came off a few weeks later but my designation as Sanchez, at least in the gatehouse, stuck.)

clear the metal detector. replace duty-belt on waist. replace coat on shoulders. walk up the zig-zagging concrete path towards the Admin building. there's a little patch of lawn in front, & a couple of little flower boxes (a rather pathetic attempt at "jollying the place up a bit"), but the rest of the grounds have been scoured of vegitation.

thru the front doors. navigate hallways & doors to get to Control, which is a little machine-gun nest in the heart of Admin that overlooks Count (calls count over the steno, coordinates count tallies with the computer network hooked up to the rest of the state), doles out various keys, radios & restraints, --in the event of a riot or trouble in Visiting (which is adjacent) there's also a rack of shotguns, tear gas & revolvers. (to the best of my knowledge, these have never been used) there's also a video-camera in the event of a Planned Use of Force or a Use of Force that Wasn't Planned, But Happened Anyway.

control officer: you're [me], right?
me: last I checked.
c.o.: you're in the Cage tonight. take these.
(little key. scribble initials in Key Control Log.)
me: dang.

(more exciting Adventures in Corrections tomorrow. gotta run.)

question: what the HELL am I doing with my life?