Yes, it’s true.  I’m not exactly sure how that looks yet, I’m still figuring it out, but I’m trying.  I’m learning that one of the anxieties keeping me from it wasn’t what I’d been fearing, and I am lucky to have more people, more true friends here and in my life, than I can thank right now.  I’ll save that for the pods.

  Because I do want to be with “my people”, but I can’t do another 14 years in that.  And why should any of us?

  I am still figuring out how and why I think, why I’ve done certain things, and that’s part of my process right now, but I do know I can’t stop thinking about a problem until I find the cause.  Then I can’t help but want to fix it, make it better.

  Grande Cache Institution has fostered, supported and rewarded a workplace atmosphere so toxic that on April 25, 2022, a Warden, with 30 years experience in the building, with all the same training and policy we have, spoke to a CX (who, in this case, is a 14-year officer who has served on the local, been trained as and worked as a manager in light blue, but hadn’t spoken a word to in months) on their second shift inside security in over 2 years, like an inmate.  If you speak to someone, anyone like that you clearly, in my mind, have no respect for me, or anyone associated with me.

  I asked a fellow staff member to begin conversations with me in future appropriately, by name or title, end of story.  Mask had nothing to do with it in the first place, technically he was correct- I was heading out, but still indoors.  But I couldn’t leave for the day, past the time my doctor recommended but sooner than I wanted to, before addressing that disrespect, that bullying atmosphere, and THEN going home to fall to pieces again and start over.

  This should not be the way people that respect their peers or staff talk to each other as a matter of habit, but it has been.  It’s the same way other managers treated me when I tried to return  the week of November 15, 2021 and just a couple of weeks ago again- which finds me here now.

  We deserve the respect being demanded of us before we can give it back.  Policy says so- we all get the same training on it.

  I had 34 years of life outside this community and in a diverse range of workplaces and places before GCI.  Those managers promoted through the building, have not had that.  In that sense this isn’t all their fault, not completely.  Now add 14 years of experience here, including the last 2 years to think on the problem, which is just that:  the hypocrisy, the atmosphere of threat, of favoritism, the politics and bullying and harassment that we see so often but are hammered on daily over, being done by managers that have never been held accountable for their behaviors.

  We really are a product of our environment.  And this one breeds negativity.  It has made us this way.   It feeds our fears, anxieties, depressions, the small town cliques and politics, all of it.  It damages our mental health, and we take it out on others. It did to me, so I won’t be doing it anymore.

  I’ll stand up, for myself, for my peers, respectfully, because what can they do?  Discipline?  Already done, and I hear they can’t fine us anymore.  But try again, please.

  Fire me?  Go ahead, I’ll cash that pension and quit like I’d already decided to over and over for so long but I didn’t because of that part of me that didn’t give up, that wanted to stay and help (even yesterday, knkwing how short the floor was; ask Mr. Humby) make things better.  And I know there is life outside Corrections.

  But yes, I am coming back.  I am back. See you soon, I hope. No worries.