Esc/Ctrl

This Video Has Nothing To Do With The Following Entry But It Rocks...Enjoy!

Roll call has a tendency to sneak up on you in a place like the prison where I work. You know it's coming. Sometimes, you're tempted to just call in because you don't necessarily like where you're going to be working.

I wasn't looking forward to it. While my partner had been a real stand-up kinda person, she didn't exactly know how to volunteer information. Her training methods aren't the best, but I got most of what I needed to know, thankfully. Had to chase her a bit but I got it.

Last night was the first of two nights where I would work The Control Center...alone...solo mission. I've accomplished many things in my life. Teaching myself how to type after failing typing classes, teaching myself guitar basics after failing guitar instructional courses, teaching myself the hard way that dying wasn't exactly in my list of options of things to do and the biggest of them all, I think, turning a hobby into a business...I like them all but the real question is, could I teach myself what hadn't been taught to me?

After Roll Call was dispersed, I packed myself down to Control. This is the nerve center of the prison. With so many restraints, keys, tools, equipment, inmates, events and everything imagineable to keep up, it is the single most stressful job on the compound. It's a job few people want...and one even fewer people ever master. Those that do usually don't get any type of respect from their peers. Most tend to think that we're just desk/computer/data jockeys and they're right but the multifaceted eyes that Control Phreaks must be can be the one thing that causes some if not most of them to become assholes. Believe me when I tell you, we're only that way because we have found new respect for it and now, we do what we must to get the job done.

The shift starts with one person issuing restraints, radios, keys, tools and whatever else may be needed and making sure they're properly signed out by our shift and properly signed in by the outgoing shift as one does the ultimately stressful task of taking count. The issuing is easy, even in long lines but taking count means that you MUST be sure that everyone is present and accounted for. If they are not, recounts must be done and if the count does not clear within those first precious thirty minutes, then it can be safely assumed that an officer was not doing their job properly, one got away, or both.

The job of taking count was mine. The first time I'd done it, it took nearly twenty-five minutes to clear. The second, only fifteen. Yesterday, I got the bastard down to a flat-rate eight minutes. Then again, this time they were turning in counts that were definite and true. Now why can't they just do that every day? I'll never know. After that is the making of the new count sheet. This is what I'll be using for the whole night. It's a list of how many inmates are assigned to which areas and it's like a huge grid that we jot figures into. How many we have and where, how many are assigned to these locations, how many are physically present, so on and so forth. This is the biggest pain in the ass to keep track of but it's necessary.

Count shit aside comes the daily census (Which we do way earlier than we're supposed to) and it basically states what the count sheet and our daily log states...only it's more concise and your arithmetic must be precise or you and the computer will be having a brawl later on. That damned computer is always right and if you're off...it's not the computer...it's you.
Liken that to the Chuck Norris joke that, "If it smells, tastes, and looks like chicken but Chuck Norris says it's beef...then it's fucking beef!" Got all that? Good, next item.

There is the daily log, this is a record of everyone entering and exiting the compound and what times they did it, what happened on the compound, who did what at what time X amount of times with various tools and the often disasterous consequences thereof. It is our business to know your business. We know who you are, your phone number, where you sleep and, much to our chagrin, how many times you masturbate...and with which hand. No one is immune from us. Officers even fall under our close scrutiny. That call I get rousting me outta bed to tell me that there's an emergency trip for which I must brave daylight? That's Control. That phone call asking me where something is when it damned well should be where it belongs? That's Control. See the pattern? This is the All-Seeing Eye of our small institution.
Then there are the forms to email, rosters to print, the institutional counts to email, hundreds of emails to look at and send and receive and then forms to copy in multicate and distribute amongst the mailboxes up front. More issues, trips to call in, the various assortment of beepers that get activated and most assuredly, an inventory of a multigalaxy assortment of handcuffs, legirons, waistchains, keys, screams, laughs and mosquito farts to keep track of. This is not for the faint or weak of mind. You must be hardcore and focused. This is where it ends and begins...it's The Great Conjunction...and it's only for those who can handle the stresses of it.

Being a smoker doesn't help in the matter. I can't smoke in there. With no one else present, I can't just step outside which means my hands must be kept busy at all times or I'll go berzerk like something out of a story of a barbarian raiding party on an insane rampage. No one will be safe from my wrath if this is the case. During a 12-hour shift, this is an endurance trial and I passed having only had two cigarettes from start to finish.

Having people who are no-bullshit, willing to come in to talk to you, help you take care of little problems here and there and even give you that occasional smoke or piss break helps too.

Now, you ask yourselves if this Orwellian and often Draconian aspect of the job bothers me. No....why? Because we knocked out the work and spent most of the night fucking off. From Melica telling us about her child stomping her husband in the nuts to Mikey ripping farts Taco Bell style and thereby leaving me stranded breathing the fumes, The night went quickly. I'd hardly noticed the passing of an hour. I didn't get sleepy. I'm not tired now.

I need to sleep though...soon, it will be time to go at it again.

And I'm sick enough to take this kinda thing.