Crappy Job (#40)

So You Have a Crappy Job

I had a bad job. Well, I thought it was bad. I got paid well, and not a lot was expected of me, but I wanted more. I wanted a better title, more money, and ultimately, more authority to make decisions. I couldn’t be content with what I had. This was the gateway, the starting point, to my actions that ended in a 3-year prison sentence. I thought I had a crappy job, but I would give anything to have that job back now, considering where I am. Perhaps I can shed some light on some of the things I learned about wanting more in my job and being content with what I have been given.

All prisons expect their inmates to work (at least all Federal prisons do – barring some high security or other extenuating factors). I’ve written about my various jobs in prison, and I still find it to be one of the most interesting situations I have ever experienced. I work for the institution, but it’s the taxpayers who ultimately pay my wages (which would be criminal if I got paid this on the outside, 12 cents an hour). You are supervised by a guard. Yet, in most prison jobs, you will not interact with anyone from the institution. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, the inmates are your actual customers, and as anyone knows, you really work for the customer. Your customers, while not in direct contact with you, get angry if they have dirty bathroom, poor food, etc. But, in prison, the customers don’t pay for anything. If you can recall back to your basic economics class, the prison is like a communistic economy. Each prisoner should work their best and hardest because the common benefit is the reward, not wages or private ownership. If everyone worked hard, then the food would be better, the restrooms cleaner, the grounds tidier, etc. But, as sinful people, we don’t think like that. The prisoners think, "what kind of effort should I give for 12 cents an hour?" As a result, you get an effort that is the product of 12 cents an hour or what takes the least amount of effort).

When I was a supervisor, one of the most common complaints was about the employee’s level of pay. The management’s response was always find another way to motivate them beyond their pay. The reality is you have to motivate yourself. Even if you have a bad job, finding a new job probably won’t solve the problem. You have to learn to find the positives about the job. Do the job you have and do it well regardless of who is looking or if you are rewarded. Take pride in what you do. I look at this like I would look at dating or self-esteem. If you like who you are, if you are confident in who you are, it will be noticeable. The same is true with your job. You don’t have to necessarily like data entry or like cooking French fries, but by doing it well you can be proud of what you did. If you adopt this attitude people will notice. You can’t do it to be noticed though. You have to just do your job well for the simple reason that you want to take pride in doing your job well.

Finding the right job in prison was important. However, the right job depended largely on what you wanted to do with all the time. There are jobs in prison that take 30 minutes a day. There are jobs that take 3-4 hours. There are jobs that may require you to be up all night and there are jobs that require you to get up at 4am. There are disgusting jobs like cleaning toilets, hauling trash, or washing 500 dishes. There are easy jobs like dusting phones or mopping a small room. There are challenging jobs that require specialized skills. There are even jobs that allow you to leave the prison. It’s important for an inmate to find a job that works with the inmate’s personal objectives. This is true on the outside as well. I’m not saying that you need to change jobs. But, try to make your job work for you. Develop a skill set through your job that can help you be a better person, or a more efficient worker.

Let me give you some examples of my jobs in prison and how I made them work for me. Inmates are assigned their first job by the institution. My first job was as a recreation orderly. After 3 or 4 months, an inmate can change jobs to something they might like better. As a recreation orderly, I was responsible for weeding, watering, and picking up trash in a certain area of the recreation yard. This was not my ideal job. I was supposed to work from 8 – 10 am and then again from 12 – 2 pm. Now this job didn't take four hours, and many inmates made it take an hour or less. Fortunately, the rec jobs do not have a guard who is constantly monitoring the inmate’s every move, so you could do your job in 30 minutes or you could take more time. I figured this job would take about 2 1/2 hours to do well. So, I made it work. I went to an exercise class from 8 – 9 am and then after already getting sweaty, I would proceed to do my weeding work from 9 – 10.

When I came back out at noon, I would water the plants while I walked the track. I also brought out books to read or wrote letters. I could read while I picked up trash. I made the job fit with what I wanted to accomplish while still doing my job and doing it well (this based on the fact that no one else weeded and rarely did anyone pick up trash). Did I do this to be noticed? No, I wanted to look at my work each day and say, “The rose garden looks good.” I got to enjoy the rose garden because I worked on it. I know other guys appreciated it too, but that wasn’t why I did it. It was an unintended benefit to them. The job itself was not difficult, but I tried to do it well, and better myself while doing it.

I made this job work for me by getting exercise, writing, reading, and enjoying the rose garden. My family and in-laws are gardeners. Even if I only had time to work on the rose garden, I would have made the job work for me because I would have learned something that would have helped me relate to my wife and in-laws. I would have become a better husband simply by learning something about gardening. Most guys in prison wouldn’t view their job as a way to become a better husband and probably many of you don’t look at your job as a way of learning something that can make you a better person. I’m not necessarily talking about the actual skills you need to do your job. I’m talking about other skills you can learn from your job.

Jeff