I carry two pens at at work. One of which is a fine-point gel rollerball for the (frequent) occasions when I’m writing or signing something that has carbons.
The other is a fountain pen with a medium nib. This is the pen that I use for everything else, and is the one I use the most. To the point where I have to refill the converter about every three days or so.
Somebody forgot to remind me that a promotion comes with an exponentially-expanding increase in paperwork. The bastards.
Anyhoo, part of the reason I’m going through rivers of ink is that when an Inmate Request Form (colloquially referred to as a “kite”) crosses my desk I answer it properly.
Instead of scrawling a single word (“Approved”, “Denied”, “No”, or the like), I address the response to “Mr (or Ms.) [Insert Critters Name Here] and write a — usually — short paragraph explaining why I am not going to authorize the inmate to receive a My First Meth Lab in the mail; or opining that if Ms. Critter didn’t want to get stripped and placed on Suicide Watch in Solitary then she shouldn’t have tried to hang herself with a bed sheet on video.
Duh.
I hadn’t realized that this would get as … distinctive … as it has, until the other day, when an officer brought me a kite from an inmate in the last ten minutes of shift. It had been a long shift, I was tired, out of ink, out of sorts, running low on patience and the request was a calculated attempt to game the system.
So I grabbed the kite and my rollerball, wrote a quick “Denied, see Inmate Handbook”, signed it, and handed it back to the officer for return.
Lord have mercy.
I get back to work next shift and the first thing I hear is that a certain inmate has twisted off. He’s raising hell, flooded his cell, filing grievance after grievance and generally acting the ass.
Huh. I trundle back to Solitary to ask him just what the hell his major malfunction was, and to impress upon him the advantages to a nice, quiet night; when — upon seeing me — he practically bursts into tears.
“Mr ‘Dawg! They’s fraudulating a superior officer! They can’t do that!”
I blink, feel my eyebrow slide up, and the Smartarse Gnome takes the opportunity to grab my tongue, “I’m pretty sure that fraudulating violates the laws of physics, if not the laws of the State of Texas, Anthony, but which particular case of flagrant fraudulating are you referring to?”
He waves a stack of kite forms in my general direction for emphasis: “You, Mr ‘Dawg! They is impressonating and fraudulating you! And I won’t stands for it!”
I look at the on-coming tier officer, “I am? Why was I not told? Did I at least hold out for dinner?” That worthy gives a puzzled shrug (which is a normal response from my minions, come to think), and I turn back to the passionately declaiming Anthony.
He promptly shoves a stack of kite forms into my paws, each one with a paragraph or three on the back in Noodler’s Blue/Black from a medium nib, “That’s you.”
“Okay.”
He waves a single sheet of paper upon which four words are written. With a fine-nibbed black-ink G2.
Oops.
“They said this is you — but I know better! I know better! I knows your writing, and this ain’t it! They wrote it, and said it was you! That’s fraudulating! If someone writes something and says that someone else writes it, and that someone didn’t write it, and that someone is a superior officer, that’s impressonating a superior officer! I won’t stands for it! It’s fraudulating!”
Crap.
Why me?
LawDog