Monday, December 3, 2012

Mutes, sociopaths, and c*ckblockers

And thus was the title of my day.

I've been blessed with a particularly onerous caseload lately. One guy is a true, honest-to-goodness sociopath. It's scary how good he is, because he can talk to me like he's just this downtrodden, misunderstood guy trying to get the care that he needs, but the next minute he can be spewing some of the most vicious, hateful, vile things I've ever heard. When he's pissed he has this stare that can only be described as reptilian, like he's silently calculating the absolute best way to do really horrible things to whoever pissed him off. It's both clinically fascinating and scary as shit. Today I caught him with contraband and he was so nice about it. Like spooky nice.

I've got another guy  who refuses to speak. This in and of itself is not that unusual, but this guy literally pulls the "my lips are sealed" act and will only communicate with me through pantomime. This fool CAN talk. I've talked to him before. He talks to other people. But with me, he only makes these sad faces and complicated hand gestures. It's like Charades, The Therapy Version. And the best part is that he's not what I'd consider "significantly mentally ill" so really, he's just kind of being an asshole. He started in on it again today and I lost it (in what was hopefully a totally clinically appropriate way). I just said, "You need to use your words. I know that you can talk and I'm not going to try to guess what your trying to tell me, so you need to speak." So essentially I told him to use his Big-Boy Words.

And the non-inmates were no better! I've been trying to figure out a way to not work weekends anymore, and it's turned into this crazy complicated clusterfuck. So today, my boss tells me that she may have come up with a perfect solution. It would have given me a little bit more responsibility, let me focus more on the aspects of work I really like (and am really good at, if I do say so myself), and would have justified her giving me weekends off (so I wouldn't have to change units). So she presents it to me and a couple of co-workers that may be impacted, and one guy pipes in with "Weekends off? I'd be into that too." And the beauty of state work is that, because he has seniority over me, he gets first dibs regardless. And then later he goes, "Hey, sorry to block you like that." Like "Oops! My bad!" It was the clearest example of cockblocking I've ever freaking experienced.

Tomorrow I've got a guy who will probably eat glass. But not real glass. Teeny tiny, shatter proof glass pebbles. And I'm half-tempted to eat a couple myself just to see if he'll up his game. And then maybe I'll "try to kill myself" with a paperclip. Those office supplies are dangerous, y'all.

Edited to add that I'm 98% sure there is a frog in my house, but we can't find it. They're teeny, tiny frogs but they make this huge duck noise. And of course it stops whenever we get close to finding it. So today's a total winner. 

4 comments:

  1. Seriously? And that person can live with himself. What an ass. Your co-worker actually makes the mute seem pleasurable to be around, not so much the sociopath-that ones a bit too creepy to one up the c*ckblocker.

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  2. What a d@$*! I officially dislike your coworker

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  3. Wow....asshole! How inconsiderate of your coworker! Wishing a good plan b for you!

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