Walking to the evening meal, my supervisor, Lieutenant Wilson, stopped me to tell me there had been multiple incidents during count. The holding cages were full of misbehaving felons, so she wanted me to report right away after eating.
Minutes later, I was striding across the soccer field when a green uniform came out of the dark. “Where are you going?”
“Work.”
“We don’t need anyone out right now. Go home.”
“I’m supposed to report…”
“Go home!”
I went home.
Locked in my cell for minutes, my cell door popped open. I shut the door and returned to TV.
Minutes ticked, the door reopened, and The LT silently beckoned me, and I went.
While exiting the housing unit, I explained what happened. She listened, but did not respond.
On the yard, she explained there had been three back-to-back to back alarms. She was working one, she needed me to go to a housing unit for a second one, and the third had been in Dining and had been captured on the cameras. The sergeant was reviewing the video.
Nodding, I pulled out my notebook and spoke to the housing unit floor officers. Cell fight, one of the combatants had been transported for a higher level of medical care requiring stitches which made it serious bodily injury. The floor staff had utilized pepper spray to quell the violence, the use of force necessitated an incident package.
I found Lieutenant Wilson in her office and gave her the run down.
“Write lockup orders and the notice of unusual occurrence report.”
I nodded.
“Can you review the 837’s as they come in from my officers?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said in surprise. I had reviewed hundreds perhaps thousands for her the past few years.
“You can communicate with my officers to handle every aspect of an incident, but you could not communicate that you were ordered to report to me.”
“The officer was just working here for the night,” she cut me off, “so he didn’t know you. He sent you home, you went which is fine, you need to obey my officers’ orders. I then phoned to release you, but you were in the midst of a tantrum, so you shut your cell door and pouted. I have children that throw tantrums, but they are adorable, and I love them. You are not adorable, and I do not love you. You are valuable, you assimilate information quickly, accurately, and write better than anyone here, but you are not invaluable. I’m not going to go looking for you again. Do I need to find a new clerk?”
I had always believed that Lieutenant Wilson had been very, very kind to me. Many, many times over the years she had assisted me with housing, property, medical and other issues. I now understood clearly what I had taken for kindness was simply compensation. The work I performed was worth thousands a month not the fifty I received. I had always suspected my value was based solely on the last task I had completed, transactional, now I knew that for sure and embraced reality, truth. After years of my best efforts, generally working seven days a week, I was not allowed a few minutes of pique when an officious intermeddler, assigned to the facility for only one shift, had arbitrarily sent me home when I was following her instructions. Bottom line, I had failed to report, so I had no worth, no value to her.
“I completely understand what you’re saying,” I responded, and she gifted me an icy smile that did not reach her eyes.
Lieutenant Wilson and I finished all the work about two hours past her normal quitting time, three hours past mine, incident packages have to be completed and filed before a lieutenant goes home and therefore her clerk as well.
I said good night and left already in search of a new job assignment.
-The End-
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