Response Time for Alarm Less Than 60 Seconds

My middle daughter who works in a prison as a librarian sent this text to the family texts.  I read this twice before it hit me.  Now obviously she sent the text so she must be okay.  There are a lot of reasons why an alarm might go off in a prison – medical, fight… but this is one time my mom concern came out.

My girls are all adults.  They are capable of making their own decisions and taking care of themselves.  Generally I wait for them to tell me the good, the bad, and the bizarre.

With this text, I actually set everything aside and called my daughter.  Normally I wouldn’t be able to because she’s not allowed her phone in the prison but I knew she was on lunch.  I called and said, what happened and are you all right.

As I said, there are a lot of explanations for an alarm.  In this case, it was a faulty radio which kept sending out an alert of an emergency for the officer in the library.

The good news – no injuries or drama.  Of course I gave her crap because she texted a deliberately provocative message, meant to make me go – what the F**K.  This is the warped sense of humor my family has.

Another Work Week

Today we start again with work.  The unions are calling for people to go to Madison.  It will be interesting to see how many keep showing up.  This is a furlough day for most state employees (not me) so the potential is there for a large number of employees to go to the Capitol.  There is a rock concert in support of the unions at 5 pm tonight. 

I feel like we have two very stubborn two year olds fighting over a bone.  Neither is willing to concede anything.  Yet the ones who suffer are those affected by it.  If we allow this bill to pass this Governor will have unprecedented power and the unions will be gone. 

I’m still supporting the Democrats.  I hope they stay out of the state until the Governor realizes that he has to negotiate.  Come to the table and have a discussion. 

I watched a news conference he had on line and was appalled by the stuff he was saying.  It sounded very much to me that he wanted to look at everyone’s base pay (once he rams this bill down our throats) and negotiate those down.  I’m already taking a pay cut – how much more does he want? 

He said that he wouldn’t impose furloughs but once the unions are busted he will have no one to stop him.  He said he wouldn’t lay off large numbers of people but again once the unions are gone what is to stop him?  I don’t trust him.  I think if this bill passes I could very well lose my job or end up taking a significant pay cut.

I don’t know how this will play out in the long run but hopefully we won’t have to give up our collective bargaining so we can keep some of our protection.