It’s 3:22pm on Wednesday. Wednesday in F Unit is laundry day so we put all of our dirty clothes in mesh bags and place them in the bin at the front of the unit on Tuesday night. Clothes are returned around mid-day on Wednesday… mostly clean and extremely wrinkled… so my Wednesday afternoon routine entails ironing my shirts for the week ahead. I’m happily mid-iron on my 3rd white tee shirt when the officer working our unit approaches me. “You’re Horwitz right?” I immediately do not like where this is going… unless you are close to your release date or waiting for a visit… there are very few circumstances in which you want an officer seeking you out by name. I cautiously answer… “Yes Sir”. “You got work. Gotta be out of here by 3:30pm so count is right.” I’m scrambling… “I don’t work until 5:20pm sir.” He’s walking away… “Nope. PM Kitchen. You work at 3:30pm. Get your khakis on and head out.” Last try…. “What?! No… No… No… I work at Rec… I have been working there for almost 3 weeks.” He’s basically gone… “No you don’t… system says PM Kitchen. Khakis now.” He is gone. My heart sinks, I want to plead more and explain but I see that this is a losing battle (and no one is there to plead with at this point) so I go pack up the ironing board and iron… grab my shirts and head into my room to change.
PM Kitchen is arguably worst job on campus. The supervisor is… lets just say… not the boss you want. Hours sucks. To put it in perspective, at orientation for new arrivals they tell you… “Make sure you figure out a job assignment or you’ll get stuck on PM Kitchen duty”. Again, not where I want to be. But… as I have learned… I have very little (if any) control in here so I have to accept the situation and try to fix it through the channels available to me. As I’m walking (speed walking and sweating) with my rec employment paperwork in hand to prove that I have another job once I arrive at the kitchen… I spot my rec supervisor. “Sir. I just got called into PM Kitchen, I have been working rec for weeks…how did this happen? How can I fix it? Do I have to go?” He stares at me, not sure how to handle this extremely excited/nervous person vomiting words at him. “I’ll talk to your counselor and make sure it’s in the system… I will email him today. But you gotta work the kitchen till it’s handled.” “Ummm… ok ok… thank you so much”… I say while dreading the possibility of him not actually talking to my counselor, my counselor not caring or any other scenario that would keep me in the kitchen. But, can’t do anything about it at the moment so off to the kitchen I go.
I arrive and go through my “other job” plea with the kitchen supervisor… that goes nowhere. “Doesn’t matter what you’re saying, what paperwork you have or where you’ve been working. System says PM Kitchen… you work here.” Not a great start. He then points me toward the long, ominous, industrial hallway with caged rooms on either side (the back of the kitchen has caged rooms so that workers can’t steal things such as forks, food, etc) and says “get those black rain boots and dishwasher bib.. you’re in pots and pans”. Nooooooo… out of all the jobs in PM Kitchen, pots and pans is the worst. You wash, re-wash, dry and stack every single pot, pan, tray and oven rack… anything that was used the entire day… all the grease soaked, dirty cooking vessels that are stacked to the ceiling and seemingly never ending… only to be re-filled by dinner service… that’s the job… it’s the worst… here I go.
I pep talk myself… “Okay. This is your punishment, Zach. No more working out and being able to be outside while you’re working. Nope… it’s pots and pans time buddy. Get in there…” and so I went.
5 hours and 35 minutes straight. Soaking wet… covered in grease…. the pots and pans were clean. “Horwitz. Back to the unit. Tomorrow at lunch… be here to check in then come back at 3:30 sharp!” I answer… “You got it boss”.. but in my head I know… this aint for me… I’m definitely not the one. I have massive respect now for whomever ends up being the pots and pans man but nope… not this guy.
Thursday morning, I am up and ready to talk to my counselor at 6am when he arrives at work. As he is filling his coffee machine, I explain everything to him and he says that my rec supervisor did not reach out to him (as he told me he would) and that he will fix it in the system when the rec supervisor reaches out to confirm it. Sh*t. My rec boss gets into work after my counselor leaves. “Okay… I can do this job in the kitchen until next Tuesday when my counselor works the late shift and they can talk”… I tell myself. Positive thoughts. Positive thoughts. I set my mind straight and go about my day determined to get everything I want to get done out of the way before 3:30pm so I don’t stress while I am at work. 3:15pm rolls around… khakis on and ready for work… I am actually in a good mood, contemplating the plan of attack to most efficiently bang out these pots and pans duties.
I walk into the kitchen and my boss calls me into his office and tells me that my job has been updated in the system so just wait for the 4pm count and then I can bounce back to my unit. My counselor must have changed it this am and didn’t tell me… I don’t have to put those massive, black rain boots on again today… a true miracle at Terminal Island has occurred. Thank you whomever is listening… thank you! I laugh to myself… you can’t control what happens in here. So stay positive, influence what you can and let the cards fall as they may.
Another lesson learned. I left the kitchen and went back to my unit to change for my rec job that starts in 55 minutes… with a smile on my face and whole new respect for kitchen workers here and everywhere.