Troll Lord Games

Do you ever wonder that when you are at work and looking at the other employees there?

I do on a regular basis.

I'm a Lt. at a maximum security prison. Largest in the state in fact. Looking at some of my employees I can't help but think....

WTF!!!!!
I had a HUGE "What the hell?" moment this week, and no I am not making this up.

I have an officer who works for me. He was hired with the agency from underneath a bridge. Yep, a bridge. Thats cool though, homeless folks need jobs and I'm not begrudging them that. In fact, this particular officer has several college degrees and crazy book smarts. However...

His social skills, comprehension, ability, etc.

Zip. Nada. Zilch. The man is odd. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay odd.

The other night I received a grievance against him from an inmate. A grievance is a formal procedure for an offender to lodge a complaint against staff. They file the grievance and it gets investigated and corrective actions taken as needed.

So, the offender filed the grievance, I spoke with the officer and had him write me a statement into his side of the incident. This is where it gets good...

The officer submitted a 2 page written report as his answer. I thought it strange considering the relative minor nature of the inmates complaint would have needed a paragraph at most.

NO biggie, so he wanted to be more drawn out in his reply? Cool. Well Officer Weirdo here got sidetracked in his answer and went waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay the f**k out in left field.

Did you know he single handedly stopped 30 inmates from comitting mass suicide one day? Yup, it was in his response. You want to know how he did it? After taking a vote with the inmates, they all unanimously voted that they would not kill themselves if he would sing "If you're happy and you know it" to them.

So.....

He did it....

Yeah, thats right. Seriously.

What makes it worse, this was not a prank response this officer wrote. He was being 100% serious.

The inmates, knowing his "special" nature were messing with him. And he honestly believed that the 30 of them were going to commit mass suicide unless he sang the song and clapped his hands. He thought he did great.

Who the hell hires these people. Dammit.

Yup, this is what I'm running a multi-million dollar facility with.

Sure, not all the officers are like that, and he's an extreme example of what I have to deal with but shit, give me a break.

Sad thing is, for many reasons, I'm glad to have him. He's reliable. Always at work. He never fights with his co-workers. He never causes uneeded drama. He never complains. He never smuggles in dope, cigarettes or cell phones to the inmates. He just is the weirdest son of a bitch I have ever seen in my life.

I cant expect the guy to handle much of anything out there, but I can expect him to be at work and do his damndest every day. That counts for something.

It still doesn't help my blood-pressure though.

Hey, he's giving the inmates a fun way to vent. I imagine they were laughing about his singing for days. Instead of being pissed off and causing problems for the guards.

And, as you said, at least he shows for work. You'd be amazed how many people I work with who get sick a LOT.
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Dan
http://home.comcast.net/~danbuter/candc.html - my Castles and Crusades webpage

Let me get this straight. You have inmates, in a prison, who are allowed to air grievances? Their in prison for cripes sake. They don't get to complain.
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"We'll go out through the kitchen!" Tanis Half-Elven

Peter Bradley

In England its worse, if they don't get their playstation or fall out of their bed they will sue the prison service for 1,000's of pounds. Or even better a few inmates wanted to worship satan and werent allowed to do so at first. After taking their case to the European Court of Human rights the court found in their favour and were awarded a sum of money and freely allowed to devil worship.

No joke

IMP

gideon_thorne wrote:
Let me get this straight. You have inmates, in a prison, who are allowed to air grievances? Their in prison for cripes sake. They don't get to complain.

Hah! I know!

But the grievance process actually serves a purpose.

The inmate gets to complain all "official" like on paper. We talk to him about his grievance, investigate his grievance then.....

nothing happens.

The inmate feels he is being heard and uses his pen instead of his fists against a staff member.

only problem I got against that story is isn't the officers supposed to be taken seriously. Didn't that weirdo just completely undermine his authority to the inmates?

next time he asks them to do something and they refuse unless he does the chicken dance - how does that affect population control?

I was always under the impression that the guard/inmate relationship was an illusion built on the belief that guards are no nonsense brook no bs kind of people. if that illusion breaks... what happens.

but a funny story nonetheless.

Cheers,

J.

Wow. Makes me thank the gods we have people like DD in this world who can handle such tasks... like guarding the criminally insane from escaping into the world, and keeping the criminally insane employed at an institution for the criminally insane.

2 thumbs up, DD. 2 Thumbs. You and the men and women in your field of work are apprecated man.

.................................Omote

FPQ
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Strange and kind of telling that I should run across this thread tonight. My best friend - whom I've known for going on thirty-five years - has been working as a high school math teacher for over a decade and a half now. As he and I are employed in the same profession - though not the same facility, unfortunately - I have a pretty good impression as to what's expected and what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. So in comes our bush-league neuroses case...

My friend (roughly about six months ago) got promoted to department head of math. Nice little ego stroke - not terribly much extra money, but every little bit helps, of course. Problem is, one of his people is an individual whom I would have severe doubts about letting in the door as a student, let alone a member of the faculty.

This goof - Erin by name - has gone into intimate detail about other staff members whom he'd like to "take out" - i.e., beat up - female students whom he'd like to "take out" - and I'll let you fill in the blanks on that for yourselves - and has made it a habit to punch - hard and repeatedly - my friend in the shoulder in the hallway when my friend's engaged in conversation with another staff member...and this in full view of students. Everything about this nitwit points to a weak-egoed neurotic; someone who has to play alpha dog games in order to establish that no one, no one is tougher than he is.

Cut to earlier this week. Erin came into a room where my friend was working, and apparently started making threatening gestures, including proposing getting into a fight right there. He started moving in closer. My friend - who stands six-one, weighs closing on two-thirty and has a black belt in shotokan karate - decided that he didn't care if Erin was joking or not: enough was enough. He rooted himself and gave Erin a shove across the room, and laid into him verbally; I don't think I need to provide the details on that. Erin decided to call the police, statements were taken...the whole ball of wax. The upshot of the whole thing is that my friend has been suspended, and will remain so, likely for most of this coming week, and there's a possibility that a letter will go into his file that prevents him from moving up the administrative ladder.

There are at least a few points in my friend's favor: he's been a professional teacher for over fifteen years, as previously mentioned, and never had anything even approaching this attributed to him before. Erin, on the other hand, is in the middle of his first year out of teachers' college, and there are a considerable number of other staff members who will - and have - backed up my friend's version of events and previous incidents with both the police and the administrative authorities.

I find it nearly impossible to believe that an individual in the teaching profession, for God's sake, has such a damaged psyche that he would be allowed in the door of a teachers' college, let alone put in a room with kids who could be permanently scarred after an encounter with such a deviant personality - and let's not forget, he's made several threatening gestures against both staff and the students. In Ontario, the teaching profession attempts to police itself, and does so at least passably well, by most accounts...but when an individual like this shows up, sometimes I think it would have been better to get a career at Radio Shack. Jesus H. Christ.

The same people who hired you, most likely.

DangerDwarf wrote:
The inmates, knowing his "special" nature were messing with him. And he honestly believed that the 30 of them were going to commit mass suicide unless he sang the song and clapped his hands. He thought he did great.

Who the hell hires these people. Dammit.

Yup, this is what I'm running a multi-million dollar facility with.

If your prisoners like messing with him, perhaps you should return the favor. Have him teach your prisoners dance routines, like they do at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines
Read about it.
Read some more about it.
Then WATCH it.
And watch some more.

Supposedly, CPDRC was once plagued with violence but the violence has ceased ever since the dancing began

jman5000 wrote:
Didn't that weirdo just completely undermine his authority to the inmates?

Ayup. And thats what irritates me to know end. I work in a world highly steeped in perceptions. In regards to this particular officer, he just way shifted perceptions of not only the inmates, but the other officers as well. If he wasn't before, then he is now a massive joke to them. Which means little to no authority.

serleran wrote:
The same people who hired you, most likely.

Nope.

I've been working with the agency for some time. In the past few years, we have reached critical levels of staff shortages and they have changed their hiring practices.

Heh, last month I had to go to a new class for Lts. entitled Keeping the Good Ones. 90% of the responses from Lts. in the class?

Please send us some good ones.

DangerDwarf wrote:
I've been working with the agency for some time. In the past few years, we have reached critical levels of staff shortages and they have changed their hiring practices.

Our current houseguest used to be the assistant Warden at the Tulsa Correctional faculty. So I believe he understands the nature of your situation completely.
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"We'll go out through the kitchen!" Tanis Half-Elven

Peter Bradley

Before I got hired at the Police Department, I worked for a year as a Deputy at the County Jail. (The jails in Kentucky are run by an elected Jailer, not the Sheriff like most states.)

I worked with a guy that really wouldn't have passed a psych screening if we'd had one. He was the most unsafe person I've ever seen working in a detention setting. He was clearly just acting the part of a Deputy Jailer, and had no idea what he was really supposed to be doing.

There was no formal training for Deputy Jailers at that time, and to be honest I don't know if there is any training now.

This guy, we'll call him Kevin, decided that he would "bond" with the detainees by making a friendly wager on the Super Bowl with them. Kevin told them that if his team lost he would drop and do 50 push ups. Never mind that a jailer shouldn't be trying to "bond" with people that he shouldn't trust as far as he could drop kick them, and never mind that it was totally against policy for either the jailers or the detainees to gamble, this nimrod lost the bet and actually went into the cell to crank out his push ups in the midst of the detainees! We were working in an ancient jail that still used huge brass keys to work the physical locks on the doors, and Kevin took the entire second floor key set into the cell with him.

I was downstairs watching the hallway closed circuit, and I ran upstairs when he went into the cell by himself. I thought he was trying to stop a suicide attempt or something. When I got there and saw him in the floor doing push ups I went berserk. He just couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. The Jailer read my report of the incident and immediately offered Kevin the opportunity to excel elsewhere.

One year later I was working for the Police Department and I had to serve an Involuntary Mental Detention Order on Kevin. I patted him down very carefully and used cuffs because he didn't want to cooperate. On the way to the mental facility I saw him twisting his head strangely, like he was trying to scratch his chin on his shoulder. I stopped to investigate and found that he had a handcuff key on a piece of fishing line tied around his neck so that the key hung below his shoulder blades. He had pulled his shoulders back during my frisk and I had missed the key between his shoulder blades during the search. I snagged it and got a second unit to follow me to the facility. The guy didn't know we were coming, he just always kept that key on a line around his neck.
I feel your pain DD.

DangerDwarf wrote:
I'm a Lt. at a maximum security prison.

Just curious: did you ever see inmates playing pen and paper RPGs? I guess it's unlikely, but curious nonetheless.
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Turanil wrote:
Just curious: did you ever see inmates playing pen and paper RPGs? I guess it's unlikely, but curious nonetheless.

Yeah. Its a common past time amongst some. Dice aren't allowed. So most use spinners (still technically contraband) or random number generators on calculators.

D&D has always been the most common game seen, of course the d20 version of it now.

Others I've seen are Shadowrun, the oWoD games, even a Mechwarrior game.

DangerDwarf wrote:
Yeah. Its a common past time amongst some. Dice aren't allowed. So most use spinners (still technically contraband) or random number generators on calculators.

D&D has always been the most common game seen, of course the d20 version of it now.

Others I've seen are Shadowrun, the oWoD games, even a Mechwarrior game.

No dice? Is it to prevent gambling? Or is it a security issue?

he. bet a d4 could somehow be turned into a weapon. I've seen some pretty brutal d4's in my day!

Cheers,

J.

bighara wrote:
No dice? Is it to prevent gambling? Or is it a security issue?

Yeah. Its considered gambling paraphernalia.

Anything they own (outside of books and pics sent by family) has to be bought out of the commissary otherwise it is contraband.

On a humorous note.

One unit I was assigned to happened to be in an EXTREMELY, SUPER RELIGIOUS area. At that unit, I've actually seen (recently mind you) Officers think that the offenders couldn't play D&D because its evil.
Officer whispering, "Lt. those inmates are playing *looks around as suspiciously* D&D. *gasp*"

It was all I could do not to fall over laughing.

Heh, when they summon Pazuzu to take out some guards and start a riot, I guess it might be a bad thing... or, when they start using the game to plan their escape, a la Slavers or something, maybe.

I have a co-worker that is really dim-witted. One example for ya:

He constantly askes me if I have seen [insert reality TV show name here] last night or whenever.

Every time I give pretty much the same answer:

"I don't have a TV."

"I don't watch TV."

"Maybe I would if I had a TV."

"No."

Almost every night. It's either American Idol, Kid Nation, Dances with Stars, or some other dead brain reality show.

And it's not like I'm singling out reality shows (although my opinion of that genre is quite low indeed). I don't have a TV. That pretty much eliminates the chances of my seeing any show.

I am going to be working tonight. Chances are I will be asked for the 10^10,000,000,000 time.
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The Rock says ...

Know your roll!

DD Don't feel bad even the Air Force has it's special people.

I just finished a train up for my unit & it was sadly a comedy of errors.

First Only a few of the team new how to give a proper mission brief back - The pre mission briefing to the Commander going step by step what each element is going to do on the mission, very basic-

Second less than half the team knew how to patrol, link up tactical & use proper hand signals, even more basic

Third the team leadership let the 2 newest officers try & dawn/rig their gear by them selves. -New guys never know anything officer or not and the only way they learn is to have their buddy help & teach them.

Forth the team OIC actually hushed a NCO as he was explaining proper tactics & tactical actions. A job that the NCO had been doing for the last 3 years before transferring into my sq.

Finally one of the Jumpmasters didn't know how to properly rig his ruck nor did he correctly fix an error on his own chute. That will kill you !

By the end I was thinking "Thank God I'm on a different team & only assisting &or advising....."

Good luck & good cold beer to all us who have the pleasure of working with sub par coworkers!
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