If you've known me a while, you know what I've done for a living for most of my adult life. I have seen and participated in the scene depicted above many, many times. Not as the person getting his mug shot taken, but the person taking the picture. Some people work in finance, some in computers. Others have chosen real estate and others have made their money in medicine.
In my case, I decided to forge a legacy in warehousing. Human warehousing.
What's weird is that next April, I will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of my start down the path that has led me to where I am today. On April 1, 1991 I began a journey in the correctional field working in the Tulsa County Jail as a jailer.
Excuse me...the preferred term is Detention Officer. That's what we liked to be called.
I have dealt with a LOT of the criminal eloement in my years in the business. From the maximum security inmates, some of whom have met their maker at the hands of a death sentence to the petty common criminals who get arrested, do jail time, get released, and are doomed to repeat the cycle until they either die of natural causes, commit more serious crimes that get them serious time, or continue the cycle forever. I have literally seen them all.
A lot of people ask me about my first night on shift. It is literally a blur. I mean, when I took my first on-duty shift I was assigned to the hoot-owl shift and that was to my advantage because the inmates were asleep, by and large and incidents were shockingly rare. This is not to say we DIDN'T have our share of incidents, it's just that they were fewer and further between than in the waking hours.
The incidents we had to deal with were doozies though, I can tell you.
Many of the men who saw me as the frsh-faced young jailer way back then are my clients at the halfway house I work in now and that in and of itself is a bit unnerving. I have passed into my 40s with some grace, and age is showing itself with my "distinguished" grey hair and such and it has with the inmates as well, although you can add the fading prison tattoos to them.
An aside: Now that tattooing is legal in Oklahoma prison tatts are not as creative as they once were. I say that objectively. Years ago, if you had a tattoo you had people getting out of your way, the fearful stares, and the dubious lable of being a badass. It was assumed you have done time, and that yhou are not the person who should be singled out for any "business", as it were.
NOW, everyone from your doctor to the girl who cuts my hair has one. Of course, she has pretty stars near her ear and the doctor has the EMS star thingy on his shoulder so they lack the oomph of say, Jesus Christ bleeding on the cross or the Ghost Rider skull emblazoned of a white power symbol, but how edgy and rebellious can you be when everyone has one (or seems to)?
It's like the earring thing that rocketed through my generation once MTV became popular. Anyway, I digress. And no, for my friends who have tattoos, that aside was NOT intended to be an insult.
Anyway, I was planning a rant here about some of my clients shenanigans but sadly, I have to stop here. Why? Well, the company I work for is a tad senstive about how we portray those shenanigans and I cannot go any deeper into the subject matter than to say that some of the sh*t they pull is pretty dumb. Too bad I can't talk about it.
For any company lurkers who are prowling the blogosphere looking to spring a trap on unsuspecting employees, sorry to disappoint you...see you at work tomorrow.
Okay, okay...I chickened out but I gotta be honest: I paid for this laptop with the money they pay me there. I like money, and I want to keep getting it.
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