MyTimeToBlog
My job is always the same: mow the lawn, pick up trash, litter, then deposit it all in the dumpster. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, when you work with incarcerated men, it's not. There are six of us, and we work, sometimes against one another.
His name is Peewee, and he's the senior worker who got me my job. We used to work in the kitchen at Wallen Ridge State Prison together. He knew my work ethic and pushed me to get outside with him. His word got me my position on the crew. Little did I know that I signed up for more than an in-ground job.
Once I established my position as someone you could rely on, Peewee stopped coming out to dump trash. He only showed up to mow the lawn, because our supervisor brought the equipment for us to perform our task. Since he did, him not seeing your work can get you terminated. Peewee knew this, that's why once we completed our task, the supervisor departed, and so would Peewee.
When Peewee saw me on the boulevard, I would nod my greeting, then keep it moving. Our coworkers didn't. They would call him names, cruel ones, but he didn't care. He continued to show up only when the lawn needed to be mowed.
Now in prison, you have the monkey see, monkey do. The next guy to follow Peewee's routine was my former celly, Manny. He realized that everybody in our crew worked, and since we did, he stopped dumping trash. This enraged me, because now two men made four others do the task of six. Even so, we came out and dumped the trash. You can't complain to the supervisor, because that's snitching--and that would open up Pandora's box.
When Manny talked with me, I brushed him off. He only has four months left--four. He doesn't care about work, but I warned him when we were cellies, that what you do now, you'll do in the free world. I planted the seed, and prayed that he would grow up. Now as I did, the others began calling him Birdman Jr. A rap song that they twisted to make Manny mad, because he's stuntin' like my daddy (Peewee). Those lyrics made him mad when he realized what they we saying, and due to that he nearly came to blows when he said, "Don't call me a white man, I'm black." It grew intense, and I had to intervene. Even when I did, the atmosphere shifted from hot to cold. Nobody spoke that day, we just worked...tired of the unnecessary bull crap.
We had our talks about being men: "We're out here together." That crap went in one ear, and out the other. So, I just tuned them out, thinking about the fact that I'm around lazy men who don't care.
The work is easy. It is, but not when it comes to dumping the piles of maggot-infested trash. We have correction officers that would get us out of the secured gates, so we can dump the trash into the dumpsters. It wouldn't take us ten minutes to get everything done. Now when we have this particular female correction officer on duty, she would make excuse after excuse to not dump the trash. We grew tired of her antics, so we would leave. The trash would pile up until a CO who would work came on duty; we would complain about the lazy female CO, then thank the CO who helped us do our job.
The other day we had a backhoe excavator come onto the facility. Since it did, we couldn't get outside the gate, due to restrictions about incarcerated men being in the vicinity of such large machinery. Due to that, the trash piled up. In three days, we had twelve trash carts overflowing. I, and my coworkers knew we were in for a maggot party.
We got the trash to the dumpsters on a Saturday morning. The weather was nice. Not hot, where the maggots seemed to flourish. I'm gloved up, driving the carts to the four dumpsters. It's only three of us, and those twelve carts. We started at the first dumpster, tossing bags of trash into it. All kinds of tainted liquids splashed on me. I learned to keep my mouth shut, because I had something wet hit my lip before. That lesson changed me forever. So, mouth shut, and calling out where I am was necessary when trash bags began flying from both sides of the dumpster. We filled up the dumpster, then Micky J, a sixty-year-old man climbed on top of it, smashing down the trash for us to secure the lock. We did this for four dumpsters, then had to pick up trash from the ground. Once that was done, Manny showed up, saying, "They just called me out," then took the empty carts back to where we keep them.
Manny headed to medical, which has air conditioning, nurses, and a blue cart with a few empty boxes. We shake our heads watching him, then we head off to gather up the trash around the facility. I'm shoving a cart around, stopping periodically to pick up discarded wrappers, banana peelings, and empty juice containers as I head to the C&D building.
My coworkers and I get the job done in about twenty minutes. Once done, Manny came to us and asked if we were done. We said yeah, the he stalked off without a goodbye.
This is my job. I make $ 72.00 a month doing it. The downside...you read what I'm dealing with. The best aspect of this job is the outside air. The silly conversations we have about prison, sports, and getting the hell out of prison. All in all, this job is like many out in society; sometimes fun, sometimes a pain, sometimes you want to scream...but I still get up and do it. What about you, can you deal with your job and coworkers?