My First Post on Day Shift: C.O.P. (Correctional Officer in Prison) at the California Institution for Women

After working the night shift for about a year at CIW (California Institution for Women) and about six months in San Diego, I finally had enough time in to work on day shift for awhile. I believe it was in the beginning of 1989 that I went on days. The first post that I remember working was a relief post. What that meant is that I worked two days for an officer on his days off, another two days for some one else on his days off and the last day would be for one of the other officers for one of his days off. Of course another officer would work the other day for that particular person.
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All of the units on the main yard were set up with an A and a B side. If you were to go outside and face the unit, the A side was always on your left and the B side was on your right. Each side had the total capacity of holding a 120 inmates.

I believe my post, at the time, was the Harrison Relief Officer. So what that meant is that I worked two days on the A side and two days on the B side and the other day I was the Harrison Security Officer. This also had the nickname of "rover" because when I had this position I not only had the job of backing up the officers on both sides of the unit but I had to also do window checks,with a rubber mallet, and make sure that all of the bars on the window were tight and secure. I also had to run errands for the Lieutenant and the Sergeant and serve paper work to inmates who had been written up for some type of disciplinary infraction. Another duty of the rover was at meals time to report to the kitchen area during meal times and help supervise the inmate workers serving the food.

One of the days that I was working as the security officer and I reported to the kitchen area I had what was a very interesting experience. Depending on the position and what your duties were to be as a "rover" for the kitchen was to be your assignment in the culinary that day. I was assigned to supervise the inmates in dining room 2. They have 3 dining rooms at CIW ( California Institution for Women) and dining room 2 was set in the middle of the other two dining rooms.

My position was to make sure all of the inmates had all of the food on the serving line, all ready to go, in a timely matter, and make sure when the food is served that they give all equal portions to all of the inmates. Another one of my duties was to make sure the line kept going and the inmates were not stopping asking for more portions because at the time they did not have a divider wall between them and the general population. Later on that problem was solved when they put a wall up so the workers and the general population inmates could not see each other. At the end of the line there was a food port that a worker would push the tray out to the next inmate.

Each of the serving lines had a lead inmate that took care of making sure everything was done properly. The correctional staff would direct her in what to do and then in return she make sure her fellow co-workers (inmates)were following the same orders as the staff. On this particular day Officer Major, (name changed) the kitchen officer, and myself were dealing with a very strong-headed lead person, that if you have studied personality traits was a very high "D" (dominant or choleric type) and no one was going to tell her what to do. We both told her that her that we needed her do a particular assignment before we actually started serving the inmates and she just started arguing with us and that she was not going to do it. It turned out to be a pretty ugly situation to where I wanted to start cussing at her, but as I mentioned earlier, because of religious preferences, I did not want to lower myself to that level. She kept on going on and on about how she was the lead inmate or something to that effect, until I couldn't take it any longer. At the top of my voice, normally being a "S" type of personality (supportive or shy or also known as phlegmatic) I screamed, "SHUT UP!!!!" I think I yelled it so loud that my fellow co-worker Officer Major jumped. In fact, he told me later that I scared him.

Her reaction really surprised me. She not only listened to me from that point on, she never gave me any more problems any time that I dealt with her in the kitchen or any any of the housing units on the yard that I had to deal with her. I guess I scared her enough that she knew I meant business and that I wasn't a big push-over as she thought in the beginning.

This was one of many experiences I had while I was working on my first post on day shift and many more to come as I worked most of my career on swing shift.