JULY 7, 2016: On my unit we all have to work. My job is called "FS-PM," or afternoon/evening food service. Each day I leave my unit at 12:30 and head down to the kitchen/dish-washing floor and don't return until 6:30. When I go, I join four or five others from my unit and board the elevator. Our staff escort takes us up to each successive floor to pick up other "food service" workers, all of whom (except for us) are volunteering to work for the "income." When we have collected all the workers, we head down to the kitchen. Just the elevator ride is an experience.
Inmates riding the elevator must always stand facing the back wall and ride in silence. In the interest of efficiency, our escort tries to pick up all the workers for the shift in one trip, resulting in an intimate gathering. Since we can't talk, I spend the time counting the number of men packed into a 6' x 8' elevator. The record so far is 21, and as we deplete the available oxygen in our cramped and descending capsule, I think, "Sardines have nothing on us."
Arriving at our workplace, we find waiting for us 17 seven-foot-tall metal carts filled with dirty plastic meal trays and 17 shorter stainless steel carts with dirty plastic hot-food containers. The next hour and a half can only be described as a massive, organized yet chaotic food fight. A fair percentage of the food that went up to the floors for lunch has returned untouched, and workers are banging the trays and hot-food containers on a metal counter to empty them enough to be loaded into the massive dishwasher. Food is flying everywhere. When the 1,600 trays and containers exit the other end of the machine, cleaned and sterilized, they are stacked on giant carts and wheeled over, steaming hot and dripping, to be reloaded with the day's dinner. The food that comes back from lunch is collected from floors and counters and put into large clear plastic bags to be loaded by the hundreds of pounds into grey, plastic, three-foot-deep wheelbarrows and hauled to the dumpster. Dinner dishes, a few hours later, undergo a repeat performance.