Food Trays

Inmates are so tricky. I can't help but wonder sometimes what they would be able to accomplish if they used some or their artistic abilities and ingenuity on the street rather waste it on their addictions and gang lifestyles. When inmates have a goal in mind, they generally can accomplish almost anything. Unfortunately this talent is often used to start a gang fight or get their hands on some sort of drugs but every once in a while they definitely impress.
So that disgusting looking meal you see above is sitting on an example of the food trays that we use at the prison. Luckily for our inmates the meals generally are more appealing, but definitely not something to write home about. I'm sure most of you who think of mealtime at the prison imagine a bunch of inmates standing in line waiting to have their food slopped on the tray. Not so here! Here we load up the trays early and send them stacked on carts, one on top of the other about ten high, to the units to be passed out. Sometimes we get extra trays and here is where the point of this post starts.

So our building is on lockdown, meaning no inmates are allowed to move out of their cells for any reason except for emergencies. Just read some recent KSL articles about the prison and you can figure out some of the reasons why the prison gets put on lockdown. Well I've heard before that somehow inmates are capable of working together to get fully loaded trays off of the tables in the section while they're locked in their cells. I figured a lockdown is the perfect opportunity. We had four extra trays in the building so I took them down to my favorite section as of right now, dropped them on the table and said, "I hear you guys can get full trays off of tables without spilling them. Here you go." An hour and a half later I came back to the section and saw this note.


Well now isn't that impressive? Not only had they gotten the food off of the trays to eat, but they had also stacked them back on the table and written me a thank you note. How sweet. I guess that answers my question. I now know that inmates can get food to eat without spilling it even when they are stuck in their cells.

Yes. Drugs can make you poo your pants.

Did you know that withdrawals can make you poop your pants? Yes, yes they can. Just one more reason on a list of reasons why you shouldn't do drugs. Unfortunately I learned this truth by witnessing it first hand one night. If you don't like thinking about poop, or specifically forty year old men pooping themselves, then I suggest you stop reading now. So I'm sitting in the staff office and suddenly I hear, "Help. Help. I'm sh#$&*ng myself." Naturally rather than running as fast as I could to this incident I first had to ask myself, "Did I really just hear that?" Suddenly I heard the call out again and had to realize, "yes, yes I did just hear that." So to my surprise I was responding to my first, and only so far (thank goodness), poopy pants incident.

As I walked to the holding cell I caught the not so pleasant aroma of what I would call a mixture rotten eggs and vomit. A man, the culprit, was standing up to the bars with his head hanging down and said, "I s***t myself." My sarcastic side thought, "Well thanks for telling me because I hadn't noticed the pile of diarrhea you're standing in," but my professional side had to start getting this guy taken care of. The rest of the details aren't so important, so I'll just say that a mop, a biohazard bag, a shower, and a change of clothes later the issue was resolved, for me anyway. During the process we found out that he had been withdrawing from drugs, which is why he wasn't able to control himself, so the incident was somewhat understandable.

So the obvious moral of this story is, "Don't do drugs because you might poop yourself." The other moral is, "If you poop yourself in prison don't yell down the hallway, 'I'm sh#%%ing myself,' or your new nickname amongst the inmates will be 'The Shi##er."

Blog? Why not?

Well, I've got hours to kill each night because schools out for the summer and I might as well have something productive to do. Might as well blog. I've got to have some interesting stuff to post, right? I mean hey, I work at a prison, go to school for health administration, and have a family. Plenty of room in there for some interesting stuff. Probably should mention hear that you should read what I post with caution. Depending on what happens in a day I might have one cute, mushy post about my family followed by my ever building collection of prison stories about fights, withdrawals, crazy people, and just general pains in my butt. Or maybe I'll change things up and throw in something interesting I learned about the business of healthcare or health education since I'm also working on getting certified as a health education specialist. Whatever it is, I hope whoever reads this enjoys. If you don't enjoy then at least I've got a record of some of the interesting stuff that happens in my day to day life.