Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share

Since the Metro Detroit area public schools are sanitizing their buildings in an effort to protect their students and staff from MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), I’ve become increasingly aware of the inmate-porter in our school building. At first, I thought he was obsessing over keeping everything clean, but the more I watched him the more I wondered whether he was trying to gain access to locked areas where a cache of supplies could be bartered away in general population. I noticed an even layer of dust on my classroom computers and bookshelves; it's been that way for years.

Then I started wondering if he might be a vindictive s.o.b., smearing God knows what on every doorknob in sight. This isn’t paranoia, I’ve heard about those random shakedowns of prison kitchen workers, where corrections officers find hidden Baggies of special sauce.

Prisoners are opportunists. They have very little to lose. One crazy porter gravitated toward the GED testing material. Whenever the GED Examiner walked the corridor with his locked brief case full of exam booklets, a dust mop surely followed. Telling the porter to “push-off” meant rethinking the next move—that is, until the GED Examiner requested his transfer to another facility.

Then there’s the Level I inmate-porters who, on occasion, clean the employee lunchroom from 1100 hours to 1300 hours. They will conveniently stay out of your way, hoping you will forget they’re in the vicinity, hoping you will unknowingly reveal something personal, something they can share with the rest of the inmate population. Although their ears are burning, I say, “Trick No Good.”