waiting behind locked doors

A lot of my time at Metro is spent waiting. Waiting for count to clear, waiting for the officer to come back to Programs so we can bring women in, waiting for inspection to get through my building... Most of all, I spend a lot of time waiting for someone to unlock a door for me.

Every single door at Metro is locked, and only certain officers and staff members are allotted keys to open these doors. When I say every door is locked, I mean every door. Even the bathroom doors are locked, which means if you have to go and there isn't an officer or permanent staff member around, you're just going to have to hold it.

When I went to F Building this morning, I first had to wait outside the building for the officer in the control room to unlock the door. There is a doorbell that you can ring, but it honestly doesn't do much good, and the officers are really good at ignoring it. One I finally got in, I had to let the control room officer know I was there, and then I had to wait for her to unlock the door to one of the ranges. She was busy signing women in and out of the building (there's some complicated pass system the women have to go through in order to go anywhere), so I had to wait a while.

After she let me in, I went onto the range only to discover most of the women were gone, and the remaining ones weren't interested in talking. So, back to the door to wait for the officer to unlock it once again. Fortunately there's a way to open all the building doors from the control room, but I had to wait for the officer to notice me through the window standing by the door. As I mentioned, the officers are very good at ignoring people by the door, and understandably so -- the women are constantly going in and out of their ranges, and I know I'd get sick of locking and unlocking doors every five seconds. Anyway, once I finally got out of there, I had to wait by the next range door so I could get in there. When I was done with F Building for the morning, I had to wait by the main door for the officer to let me back outside. If they just don't see you by the main door, you can yell "101" so they know to unlock that door -- I have no idea why, but all the main entrance doors to the buildings where the inmates live are labeled 101. I'm not a very confident yeller when it comes to a place where I'm just a lowly intern, however, so I usually just wait for them to see me or for someone else who also needs to get out to yell it. I guess to me it just sounds rude, though I don't think it is when the inmates or the other officers yell it. I don't know why, but I guess I feel like I don't deserve that privilege to command the door to be opened.

When I brought a woman back to Programs with me, I saw that the office we use was being occupied by another of my fellow intern chaplains, so I had to get the officer of the building to unlock a different room -- and even if the office had been empty, I would have had to ask him to open that one as well. Fortunately, this officer was really nice and happy to unlock doors for me. Some of the officers are not quite as gracious and probably hate that they have keys. But hey, it's their job. I'd happily take keys if it meant I could get in and out wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.

At the end of the day, I had the officer unlock the office so I could get my things. I went up to B Building and waited for the officer there to open the sallyport. If I haven't described this before, there's a small room with two thick glass doors for the walls. Behind another glass wall is where an officer is always stationed so he can monitor who is coming in and out. If you want to go one way or the other, you wait for both doors to be closed. The officer will then open your door, you go in, the door slides shut, and then the other one slides open so you can get through. The two doors can never be open at the same time. The sallyport separates the prison area from the front gate and some of the offices. Inmates are never allowed on the outside of the sallyport unless they have a work detail that involves cleaning the lounge area.

When I got t0 the other side of the sallyport, I walked through the lounge and out the doors, down a long ramp and up to a fenced gate. There I had to wait for the security officer to see me and unlock that door, then another, and then another. Then I walked through the actual security area, returned my volunteer badge for my license, signed out and waited behind the very last door to freedom.

Like I said, a lot of my time at the prison is spent waiting behind locked doors. Sometimes I feel frustrated, sometimes I'm in a hurry, sometimes I feel weary, and sometimes I just wait because it's all I really can do. With so much waiting, though, it sometimes feels as though not much gets accomplished in an eight-hour day. I do what I can, though. I think by the end of the summer I will know a lot more about patience and waiting than I ever have before.