Topic 92: The Futility of the Practical

Carol:

                 Papa, Mama and Baby Bear Go Shopping 

Look for the Best Deal
When I first met Marc he was driving a Volkswagen Beetle like most of our college friends, but the car taught him a hard lesson.  Marc had found a job right after receiving his student loan check, so he decided to buy the VB with cash. He chose a year-old model expecting a better deal but didn’t do his research. Soon after, he found out he could have paid less for a new model. A couple of days later he was fired from his job and evicted from his apartment. He became a master at frugal living out of necessity.
 

Marc is still motivated by finding the best deal, but he carefully researches major purchases and is an expert negotiator. Nobody gets better deals on vehicles or appliances than Marc. I try to remember that when he comes home from a trip to Costco.  He is a sucker for buying in bulk. If we need a quart of milk, he will buy two gallons because they are “a better deal.” Our hall closets contains gigantic  boxes of crackers, gallon-size containers of juice and stacks of tuna cans that won’t fit in the kitchen pantry.  The humongous packs of paper towels, toilet paper and Kleenex are stuffed onto shelves in our laundry room. What the heck, they were the best deal.

Save on What You Need to Buy What You Want
My parents paid for my education and gave me an allowance so that I didn’t have to work in college. When I started dating Marc, I realized pretty quickly that if I let him pay for everything (still common in 1969), I would never get to go anywhere. Going Dutch was the practical solution.
 

I have my own consumer philosophy.  On big purchases, I know exactly what I want and am willing to wait until I find it, whatever the cost. But, I have an almost obsessive, prideful frugality about daily necessities.  I collect store coupons and carry cloth bags so that I can buy expensive cage-free eggs from happy chickens. I own an expensive, extremely comfortable desk chair and a brand new computer, but my books are stored on a  wobbly bookshelf that Megan helped me put together. The kits were so cheap that I bought three. I put the first one together by myself, but when Megan helped me put the second one together, she got so mad at the complicated instructions and the poor quality of the materials that she refused to help me with the third. It’s in the garage next to the huge bag of dog food Marc buys in bulk.  

What About Common Sense?
Megan is one of the smartest consumers I know, which makes her the most practical. When she was younger, she would never ask us to buy her anything until she had researched it  and created an argument to go with the research. When she started college, she talked us into letting her have her own credit card to pay off $10 purchases each month that would allow her to build up credit in her own name. By the time she was living in England, she was able to broker a sensible car loan. Maybe she listened to her Dad’s VW story.
 

Megan recently bought her own bathroom scale. She was tired of weighing herself on the heavy, ugly, inaccurate one Marc bought at Costco. She found a sleek and accurate model in the mid-range cost. Baby Bear has taught Papa and Mama Bear that common sense consumerism is NOT futile.

Megan:

This topic makes me think of the prison. My staff and I did a lot to try to make the library feel un-prison-like (and in some ways, un-library-like). We painted the walls a bright blue. We played loud music, we shouted across the room. Once we had a contest with giant rubber bands, trying to knock books off the shelves.  We did this as much for ourselves as for the prisoners, if not more so. When I say the prison could be a depressing place to work, most people nod their heads like they know what I mean. They don’t, but it doesn’t matter. But when I say it was also a lot of fun, they assume there’s something off about me. My anecdotes sometimes come off as unprofessional, but those antics were part of coping with the environment, just like gallows humor, and keeping your back to the wall.

A lot of my responsibilities took me outside the library and around the rest of the jail. I enjoyed this because it gave me a chance to remind the rest of the prison that there was a library, and me a chance to find out what was happening in other areas. I sat on several committees with members of the senior management team. The management structure of a prison is complicated, and I’m not going to waste words here with a detailed explanation. Simply put, the head of the prison is the Number One Governor. He (or she) is responsible for everything, if there was an escape, or a murder he would lose his job. Under the Number One is the Dep(uty), and then there are governors (managers) of each area – Security, Operations, Health & Safety, Diversity, Learning & Skills etc. All rules and policies put in place by the senior management team are implemented by the uniformed staff – the Officers and Senior Officers, and the civilians contracted in like me, the education staff and the nurses in the healthcare department. That’s as brief as I can describe it.

In a prison, the biggest gap in communication is between the SMT and the officers. The officers and the prisoners are closer. Some of the prisoners and staff had been living and working together since the jail opened in 1992. For the most part, they had good relationships. You’ll find the odd prison officer who hates the prisoners and treats them that way, and vice versa – there are prisoners who do not communicate with staff. That relationship, between prisoners and staff, is complicated and dangerous. Prisoners, understand why they are there and why the staff are there. Most of the inmates are murderers, arsonists, gang members, drug addicts and mentally ill. Keeping that environment calm and safe for everyone involved is the biggest part of everyone’s job. Over time, years I mean, one develops what is known as jail craft, the ability to assess a person or a situation, evaluate risk, negotiate and if necessary, use force. My four years was nothing – especially for a civilian; a well-run prison trusts the experience of staff to uphold its primary duty which is to protect the public.
 

In the time I was there, we had three Number One Governors, and four Deps. The rest of the SMT shuffled responsibilities every few months at the whim of the Number One in an effort to meet whatever performance targets or audit requirements had been set by the Ministry of Justice. Shortly after I left, the third Number One resigned under allegations of serious professional misconduct involving swapping difficult prisoners with other jails during inspections to improve  scores. One of those difficult prisoners committed suicide.

Prisons are an unfortunate, but practical neccessity of civilization. But the idea that anyone is really protected or helped in a prison is an illusion, an exercise in futility.