[947] Hills To Die On

It happens fast, but not too fast.

I made it 13 days. I got to day 13 of a new job before I emailed regarding policy and practices. I got to 13 days before I “complained” that something didn’t seem right to me about what I was told or what I’ve experienced vs what is written down. Now, I’ve started my “incident tracker” of all of the disconcerting things of my work environment and keeping my records for the things people will lie to me, but worse, lie to themselves about.

 

It started with inclement weather yesterday. Any reasonable person in authority should have told people to stay home. They did not. I challenged their lack of proactive responsible engagement. Today, it’s being told, after weeks of it not being an issue or even mentioned, to take out my eyebrow piercing before entering the prison. I read the rules, and I’ve counted half a dozen violations that have been ongoing for a year or more from the staff currently employed. I want the same privileges they have, not least of which because it’s a pain in the ass to remove my piercing and get it back in.

 

I consider things like this worthwhile hills to die on. Why? I’m speaking to a fundamental truth about fairness. I’m speaking to what it means to be reasonable. I’m desiring a world that has grown up about what constitutes “professional.” I’m aware of explicit violations of policy that don’t seem to bother anyone akin to the one I seek. But, most importantly, I think when you allow yourself to repeat nonsense like “I encourage you to go back and read the policy” after I’ve told you I have, quoted it and shared it, and denoted the arbitrary enforcement, you’re telling me as explicitly as polite bureaucratic nonsense allows, to go fuck myself.

 

I have a problem with this, because when I play by your rules, you don’t wish to engage. When I try to speak plainly about the absurdity or arbitrariness, you try to punish me, and if I just shut up, I start to eat a hole in my chest and obsessively think about how fucked up it is I must bother with your type of entity or person at all. This gets in the way of me doing work, feeling well, or otherwise engaging in life. As you can see, I’m writing again. That’s not happening because I’m merely processing, accepting, or moving on from something that has exhausted all the words I might have to say about it.

 

Really think about this as it pertains to your own life. You’re always making a choice. You’re choosing to remain silent and keep the checks rolling. You’re choosing to not politely, but firmly, and consistently, engage in finding the person or the language to challenge the shitty power structures that be. I’ve so built it into my ethics as a person, that I feel obligated, mostly because literally no one around me is ever the squeaky wheel. It matters. You become a function of the arbitrariness of “the world” or the ambivalence of those in power. Then what? You see the shitty consequences as they play out across our culture and time. To me, it’s a direct fucking line.

 

It's important when you engage in this kind of cage rattling that you’re clear about outcomes. Could they fire me for being politely annoying and inquisitive? Sure. Everywhere is “at-will” employment these days because, we’ve literally built a lack of accountability into our social working fabric. Do I give a fuck? Not enough. Nor do I feel it is that big of a risk. I’m scrapping off a few layers of respect-for-myself skin in getting a job altogether. When I leave, it will be in service to healing, not in lamentation for the paychecks that never were.

 

For me, for always, it’s about bringing attention and awareness to things no one wishes to think about or speak to. I actively suffer perceived injustices. I think you do too no matter how unwilling you are to speak to them. If I should suffer, particularly unreasonably, so should you. The magic of being adult and thoughtful individuals is that across so many domains, we really don’t have to suffer. It’s a choice. I, in spite every common notion of what you should or shouldn’t be speaking to, will make you speak to that choice explicitly, or I will maintain a level of considerably less agreeableness. This isn’t a game, a distraction, or me pathologically looking for dumb fights. This is about living within principle and practicing what is best.

 

I don’t think things change unless you feel the pain and the consequences. You can, of course, be so psychologically broken that any degree of pain just makes you break down further. I’m not willing to treat people tasked with building up and embodying pro-social and accountable ideals, for inmates no less, as feeble minded and unduly put upon in my insistence they engage. That’s a privilege, to ignore things, which you have not earned from me, particularly if you’re going to deem yourself capable of designating how I conduct my life or appearance.

 

So I’m going to keep writing emails, keep asking questions, and keep looking for the next person to annoy until you look the other way, or tell me explicitly what kind of intractable cunt you’re willing to be about nothing, for nothing, and just because you can. That’s all I want. Own it. Like a monkey flinging shit in your face, I can make you own it. Then I can go back to giggling to myself and sniffing my fingers. There’s no law against it, right?