I used to work at a runaway shelter. I'm not going to tell you the name of it because I don't want to get sued, so we'll just call it the Hippie Love Runaway Shelter, because it was like that. Believe it or not, it was a pretty cool job. Mostly I worked the overnight, which meant I held a lot of hands during dark nights of the soul, which I'm fairly good at. It had its downsides, of course, like the kids who thought I was a punching bag (always thwarted by my faithful partners Cool Catholic Dave, with whom I had awesome theological discussions at night, and Snarky Tim, whose little girl had grown up into what he called The Daughter Thing and was flunking out of college and dating a boy he considered less than worthless) or a dumbass who didn't know what pot smelled like, or doubted my complete willingness to keep turning the light out after they turned it on over 9000 times.
There are many amusing anecdotes from my time at the shelter, but the one on my mind tonight is not so amusing. I'm not sure why I remembered it right now, but anyway, I had this supervisor that I'll call Cray Cray Ay Nay, because, yes, boys and girls, she was a nutball of the worst kind - a stealth one.
At first I was really happy to be working for Cray Cray Ay Nay, because she was raised by neopagan parents. As a neopagan myself I don't often run into this, especially because I don't find religion to be an appropriate topic for the workplace, but she volunteered the information and I told her that was fine with me.
As time went on I discovered that Cray Cray Ay Nay was not really as cool as I'd thought. My first clue was when she started telling me about her graduate studies in social work; she had an internship at Wackenhut (now rebranded as G4S, but you may remember them as the private prison if you're old enough), and the way she kept talking about the one prisoner that was sort of her project made red flags go up all over the place for me.
Of course I'm a cynical, bitter person and really always have been; but I inherited from my mother this tiny spark in my soul that says, with bright shining dewy SpongeBob SquarePants eyes, EVERYONE DESERVES THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. It's like she played too many Howard Jones songs while I was in the womb. Anyway, so I told myself that I was imagining things and that Cray Cray Ay Nay certainly would not do what I thought she was doing, viz., having sex with her project boy.
This gauzy illusion lasted about a week, until I happened to be in the staffroom one day writing up an incident report and heard Cray Cray Ay Nay oversharing to another staff member whom I'll call Double Daisy (because five days a week she worked second shift at the Hippie Love Shelter and then went and worked the overnight at Juvie) in the supervisors' office, with the door slightly ajar.
I hope you don't have some kind of weirdo delusion that I'm too good to eavesdrop. If a chick is going to leave the door open whilst explaining her illicit and in fact illegal love affair to a subordinate, like a dumbass, you bet your ass I'm going to stretch my ears out. I took about 30 minutes writing up that incident report, long enough to confirm that yes indeedy, Cray Cray Ay Nay was sleeping with her project boy at Wackenhut. And she was engaged to someone else. And Double Daisy really didn't want to hear about this, but Cray Cray Ay Nay clearly was unable to stop her TMI.
After this I just couldn't take Cray Cray Ay Nay seriously anymore - and don't make the mistake of thinking that this meant I didn't take my work seriously. I brought in a transgender person to talk to them all about transgender (we had a lot of trans kids and they took a lot of shit), played dumb games, went to activities that were mind-numbingly boring, participated in the insane Thanksgiving dinner, brought my 4-year-old son in on Christmas Day to help out with the celebration, organized a talent show, and in general did everything I could think of to replace 18 years of good upbringing in the scant few weeks they were at the shelter. When they repainted the walls with enamel paint, I sat there with the kids watching the paint dry, and all of us getting higher than all Jehovah's angels. This really was the only job I've ever had where I felt like I made an immediate and positive difference in the world, and I'm downright sentimental about it.
Cray Cray Ay Nay, though, was another story.
Her next trick was to have a staff meeting at Double Daisy's house, on the other side of town from me, and serve liquor, and then after everyone was half sloshed except me (at the time I didn't drink) we had this "teambuilding exercise" where you had to sit in the middle of the circle of your coworkers and be critiqued. And I went first, because I had somewhere to be.
Let me tell you what a really great teambuilding exercise it is to have coworkers unleash half-drunk incoherent criticisms on one another. No, really. It's just the best thing ever. Not.
The eMpTy man came to pick me up just about in the middle of this, and found me sitting in a circle of cackling, hooting drunks, in tears and completely in the wrong place for the spiritual gathering we were headed to. I sucked it up and walked to the car - didn't run - and waited until we were two blocks away before dissolving into a little wimpy girl and telling him (in sobs) all about it. Needless to say he wasn't impressed, and then and there he christened her Cray Cray Ay Nay.
I later told my sister-in-law about this, and she was like, "Wow. We just did the Macarena."
Anyway, after this I avoided Cray Cray Ay Nay like the plague, until the company picnic - which I was required to attend and started right after my overnight shift and went all the way to 4 hours before my next shift. We did roleplaying, and Cray Cray Ay Nay used her social work grad school skillz and brought me up in front of the class to demonstrate proper ways of dealing with "unexpected resident behavior." So I put my sexy on and slunk right up to her and said, "Damn, miss, you sure are fine."
This actually happened to me a lot at work, not because I was the queen of sexy, but because I was the youngest youth care worker in the place, and because young people are terminally horny; and it wasn't just the boys. I learned to roll with it, turn them down gently, and write an incident report immediately. No worries. Goes with the territory, right?
Cray Cray Ay Nay? FLIPPED RIGHT THE FUCK OUT. I expected a moment of blankness or some stuttering; what I got was her turning the color of fresh arterial blood and running away (LOL GUILTY), so that her boss, Purple Pete, had to come take over (grinning, I might add).
When the eMpTy man came to pick me up from there (with my 4-year-old son, whom he'd taught to say HAY MOMMY WE WENT TO THE TITTY BAR AND HAD A BEER AND THEN GOT TATTOOS, and also he had drawn on the eMpTy boy's arm with a Sharpie), he heard me bidding goodbye to Cray Cray Ay Nay, and said in the loudest, most carrying voice possible, "Oh my god. THAT'S Cray Cray Ay Nay?"
Cray Cray Ay Nay pretended she was in a deep conversation with someone else, but turned bright red; Purple Pete nearly collapsed in laughter.
After that I really just tried to ignore her, even after she broke up with her fiancé and - while still doing the prison guy - got engaged to one of the other youth care workers.
Shortly after that, I got thrown across the porch by the boyfriend of one of the kids; a day later, Cray Cray Ay Nay decided she was going to completely ignore my seniority and give someone else my shift, while scheduling me for hours I couldn't work; so after a week of deliberation (during which the boyfriend came and apologized; his girl was one of my girls and had lost their baby that day, and bless his heart, he was out of control), I put in my notice.
Cool Catholic Dave tried to talk me out of it; so did a couple of my favorite kids, and really I wasn't all that easy about it myself, but I'd finally gotten what my mother used to say about working at the state hospital, which was that the staff was WAY crazier than the patients, and I just wasn't willing anymore. Also, Snarky Tim said, "Good on you. I'll give you a reference anywhere you want to work, but you ought to get out of this racket."
On my last day, one of my girls told me she loved me; another said she wished I'd been her mom. I was hearty and positive for them, and then went home and cried.
I never found out what happened to Cray Cray Ay Nay and the prisoner she was taking advantage of. My ex-boyfriend's mother wound up getting her agency connected with the Hippy Love Shelter, and I suppose I could call her up and ask her what went down, but in a way, it would just be a descent back into the batshit, which, no.
I'm pretty sure, though, that no one lived happily ever after.
And I think that story has taken it out of me enough that I can get about 6 hours of sleep before my shift! YAY!
Peace out.
Edit for spelling fail. :(
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