Bob

I remember the bad man well. He was short, stocky, balding on top, and had the most calming smile. He was the type that would smile more the angrier he became, and foam would build at the corners of his lips. He turned red when he was at his worst, and he made life miserable for anybody with whom he came in contact. His name was Bob, and he was the single worst human I came into contact with in the prison system.

The Challenge Incarceration Program had many faults, but it helped shape the man I have become, and for many, it was a gateway to a new kind of freedom that had the potential to be permanent with a little work. There were people on both sides of the law there that seemed to have little interest in being present or working hard at their jobs to achieve the desired outcome. It was tough to deal with the constant negativity of the offenders around me, but it was disheartening to be victim to the ego of one man in a small position in a prison kitchen.

I come from many years in kitchens all over the state of MN, and one in Florida. I’ve seen a lot. I know when somebody knows what they are doing, and I can tell when somebody is new, and by contrast, burnt out. Bob was the latter, and you could feel his toxicity the closer you got to him. He constantly micro-managed and was always looking for things to dispute. He had no written or verbal rules, so there was no guide to follow, making everything a guess. When it comes to food, I make pretty good guesses.

I’ve repeated to a fault that the quality of prison food was without question the worst food that exists. It’s literally called prison food. What upset me most about the whole process was that there was potential to make quality food and even show people how to cook properly and maybe even have people leave the fence with some new knowledge or a skill that could be used when free. Bob shit on all of foodservice. Prison boot camp was tough enough, and Bob was employed by the state, but not a corrections officer. He demanded we follow his every order to his standards which were unclear.

He told me to put frozen case of cooked green beans into a perforated hotel pan and into the steamer, and set the time for 30 minutes. I said, “Thirty minutes? They’ll be mush!” And that is when all hell broke loose. I had only heard about his anger and seen him snap a few times before that day.

He replied with something like, “You little piece of shit, you don’t know anything! I have worked here over 25 years, and made millions of meals, and I am the boss of the kitchen!” His face began to shade with anger; he flicked the foam at his lips back into his mouth and smirked before continuing the diatribe. “There’s a reason you’re in prison and I’m free. It’s because you can’t listen. I gave you one simple task and you had to talk back. Now I have to watch you for the rest of the day!” I put the green beans in the steamer, and set the timer for 30 minutes.

He walked away and told everybody he came across how terrible I was. A short while later, when a delivery came in, he brought me front and center with the driver, and began to explain how I thought I knew everything but “didn’t know shit.” I would never make it on the outside in any job if I talked back to people like that, and I should just keep my mouth shut until somebody asked me a question. The Sysco driver anxiously awaited the end of the tirade so he could get by with his dolly full of cases.

The timer went off, and the green beans—as I suspected—were limp and nearly colorless. I placed them in a steam table for service which was about an hour away, and went about my day. We were all yelled at as a group several times as we were putting away the delivery, as there was no rhyme or reason to the storage, and we had to ask questions. Anybody that asked questions was called an idiot. At the end of our shift, he said we all did a great job and will do really well when we get out, he could tell.