Girlie has a new (tough) job

She did two years as a PR officer with the local police department. Then she applied with the county jail system and starts tomorrow with the orientation at the courthouse. I'm not sure how long that will be or even how much training she is going to have...but once she starts, she'll be having direct contact with inmates.

I KNOW what she is walking into---juveniles are just as bad as adult offenders. The men I work with are immature, violent, ignorant and difficult. They are manipulative and not in a good way. At least she talks to me and has listened to my many stories over the last 9 years.

I have good streaks and then I have terrible spots. Right now, I have a class filled with men who claim they have high school diplomas. Maybe they do. I still have to give them a reading test---and one thing they DO NOT want to do is to take a reading test and have me and everyone else know that they can't read.

I have one fella--I'll call him Grill-- who has tried multiple methods to intimidate me. First day, he shows up and wants some information for his "friend", who doesn;t want to go to school. The next day, he shows up but refuses to give me his ID, so I throw him out and give him an "A" day. The third day, he refuses to sign a job description. I throw him out, again. Fourth day, he is co-operative. Fifth day, he wants to be able to come and go out of the classroom without the benefit of a hall pass. As you can imagine, that doesn't fly with me. He tells me to go ahead and write him up--he doesn't care. Except when I AM writing him up, he throws a fit, since he feels he had a real reason to be out in the hall. (He was trying to calm down another student. Maybe. Maybe not.) But now that I've thought about it, I am still going to write him up. It can't hurt to have paper on this guy.

I just keep hoping that her guys won't be as bad, just because they haven't been in the system as long.