January 10, 2012

Prison Woes: Judgmentalism

One of my own flaws is that I look at the cover of a book too closely, the wrong genre of picture, and the book goes back to wherever it came from.

All those years I spent in managerial positions with the task to hire, make the schedule, decide pay, and fire when needed—this flaw of mine ran rampant. And in some cases, I'm guilty of wrongs (decisions based on the cover and not the content) that had profound effects on the lives of my workers and their family.

Family being another peeve. I always seemed more prone to hiring and giving hours to someone supporting a family. When in some cases, there were others better able to handle the job but had no dependents.

I didn't hire smokers if I could help it because I hated the habit and had no sense of compassion for the victims of tobacco's grip. The continual need to go smoke every 30 minutes or hour on the hour was an extreme inconvenience for other employees. Other employees were then entitled to "air breaks" that, in combination with the smokers, really punished customer service.

What brings this up now is that I still seem to do it even in here and try to rationalize it—just like I did with the smokers. In here, I avoid anyone and anything that seems to fit the "ghetto" or "thug" stereotype. And of course this is for my own safety too because the prison system is divided by race and gangs. But still... I don't like it.

There's this one guy we call "Red" (because of his hair) that's about as dumb as you could imagine—and consequentially very "ghetto. I've just never understood the choice to be that way but, I guess for some it's not that they choose it. It choose them. I know now that Red's mom was a prostitute that got him on crack when he was 12 years old. He's basically been an inmate ever since, in and out of juvenile detention, then prison with 999 years. South Carolina's little joke with a religious undertone, an upside-down 666 to serve as the standard life sentence.

If I were out now, with my company up, I'd hire and schedule more fairly. Now that I know a dust jacket isn't always right and a blurb is just another person's opinion as to what the book's real contents.

You gotta read it, to be sure.