INSIDE THE FENCE: The Blessing of Employment

Prison is the great equalizer.  There are men here with different backgrounds and experiences.  Some are highly educated and some can barely read.  Some had great careers and some sold drugs on the street.  Some are wealthy and some are broke.  Being in prison brings everyone together on the same plane.  Here we are all inmates.  There are no exceptions.  We are equals here.

Because we are equals, it means we all have to work.  Our training, education and experiences don't have any impact on your first job.  Everyone starts out working as an orderly when they first arrive, as did I.  Orderly positions are not difficult.  They are humbling positions of monotonous work, cleaning up after your fellow inmates.  Each of the four units has the same positions.  The duties are broken up so as to include many people.

My first assignment was to spot clean the walls and scrub the corner of the floor and the wall where they meet, which they refer to as the gray line, because it is painted gray.  The hours we work are 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.  There are not enough walls of gray lines to keep me busy the entire shift.  I soon learned the routine was not like a job on the outside of the fence.  In reality, the orderlies start earlier than 7:30.  We begin at 4:30 a.m. to avoid the morning rush and therefore reduce conflict with inmates who have to get ready for their jobs outside of the unit.  This means that at 4:30 in the morning, you can hear alarms beeping, brooms dragging on the floor, mop buckets with squeaky, wobbly wheels rolling down the dark hallways.  We all move into action and get our jobs done before the Voice releases to Mainline.  At 6:00 a.m., after breakfast, we would go back to bed.  Periodically, through the day, we would touch up our work areas, as needed, until 3:30, after which the afternoon crew would take over the duties.

It wasn't long that somebody on our crew left, leaving his position of cleaning the hot and cold room and the unit laundry room.  The head orderly moved me over the this new area.  The unit laundry is a small room with three commercial top loading washing machines and three front loading dryers.  These machines are free to the inmates to use as long as they provide their own detergent, which can be purchase in the commissary.  Most men here prefer to do their own laundry in this room instead of having the compound laundry do it for them because there are about 150 men in the unit.  These machines get a work out and the room is busy from 4:00 a.m. to midnight.  Most men clean up after themselves, but this room is prone to heavy accumulations of lint!

The other room is the hot/cold room where we have a very large commercial ice maker.  I am amazed at how much ice we use here.  On warm days, the storage bin is empty by the afternoon.  It works overtime producing ice at night.  There is no door to this room, so the loud noises it makes are heard through the unit.  Next to the ice machine is a hot water tap that has a heater on the other side of the wall, which provides, on demand, nearly boiling water (190 degrees) which we use for making coffee, soups and other cooking.  Most prisons offer microwaves for this purpose.  The folk lore passed along here states that we "did" have a microwave at one time, however, it is alleged that an inmate heated up liquid in the microwave and threw it at another inmate causing severe burns so they took away these microwaves and put in the 190 taps.  Now we don't have to wait so long to heat water and burn someone.  I have never seen our hot water used maliciously like that, except when I am not careful and burn my OWN hand.  You just can't fix stupid!!!

My job was to clean these areas every morning and then touch them up every hour or so.  By no means was it a difficult job.It was very annoying and I quickly tired of chasing lint bunnies around int he laundry room and removing ramen noodles from the 190 sink drain.  Perhaps the worst was the smell of tuna or mackerel that would be stuck in the drain.  So many of the guys are inconsiderate slobs in this room.

Every week the prison safety officer would tour the units and give us a score on how well we clean and live.  We also recycle our paper, soda cans and plastic.  The safety officer would produce a memo with the results of her inspection.  This report would determine which unit would be dismissed for meals first.  It would also bring about any necessary correction if your assigned area was found to be at fault for any point deduction.  We never knew when the safety officer would make her rounds.  The unit cops had different opinions about this.  Some could care less about the inspections or even if we reported to work.  Others seem to over react in the opposite extreme.  They would do their own surprise inspections and hold you to task.

This was true of one cop who I named, Colonel Klink!!  Col. Klink seemed more than obsessive about passing the safety inspection every week.  The two areas I cleaned every day were the primary areas the inspection officer focused on.  Subsequently, they were the most used and difficult to keep clean.  There were many times I would be in my bunk between my periodic cleaning only to hear my name broadcast on the Voice.  I would get up and walk across the building and report to Col. Klink.  He woudl tell me that one of my rooms was a "mess" and required immediate cleaning.  I would go to these areas for my own "inspection" and usually find a piece of lint that was recently released from the dryer filter or a fresh ramen noodle that escaped someone's bowl.  Very minor infractions but enough to make my life miserable when Klink was on duty.

I knew this job was not for me.  It seemed so pointless and endless.  I wanted to find work outside of our unit building.  Something that had more of a purpose and broke up my day.  The problem is these jobs are not easy to come by.  There are 600 men here, but there are not 600 jobs.  You need to know your way around and know the right people to get these jobs.  I was too new here to have connections. Even so, I would try.

I had heard that the medical department had an opening for an orderly.  This would still be a janitor position, but it would be out of the unit and I would be working with the nurses, physicians assistants and the doctor.  I thought I could fit in this department quite well, so I submitted a "cop out" requesting this position.  Weeks went by without hearing any news.  Then I learned it was filled by an older man who has been here longer than me.

I had mentioned my desire to change jobs to one of my new friends.  He had one of those nice jobs in the laundry department in the "mall".  I asked him if he would keep me posted if he heard of any opportunities.  I am glad that I did this because it paid off!!  A few weeks later, there was talk in the unit that many of the Hispanic inmates who were here for INS charges would be moved out to other prisons managed by private contractors.  This was not a rumor, after all.  They loaded a bus with these men, which left open beds and jobs.  Two of them happened to be in the Laundry Department!

My friend told me about this opening so I promptly completed a cop out with my request and then proceeded to deliver it directly to the Laundry Cop.  When I arrived, I introduced myself to the cop while the existing laundry workers watched, making for a very intimidating experience.  I had never spoken to this cop before, so I did not know what to expect.  I was blessed by his jovial style in his response, despite the coarse words which are a standard of most of the cops' vocabulary around here.  In his disarming tone, he shared that he had a good recommendation from my friend.  He then explained how he had two positions open, but he had filled one of them with my Christian friend, Alex, from Brazil.  He told me that I was the second person and his vacancy was full.  I walked out of the room stunned and in disbelief, but elated in a very subdued sort of way.  I was happy to be done with my orderly position, which made it harder to go to work the next day.

I knew that getting this job was very unusual for a new inmate, like me.  This had to be ordered by God.  I was reserved in who I told about my new position.  Those whom I confided in were equally surprised that I was awarded this position.  After speaking with some of these men, I realized that positions in laundry were sought after.  Some told me that they had tried to get in to the department but were refused.  I decided not to tell any more people until I was officially transferred to the department, which seemed to be taking forever.

(TO BE CONTINUED....)

McFreedom