Friday, June 15, 2012
Isn't It Odd
I work in a field which requires me to deal with liars on a frequent basis. Before I worked in this field, I truly was incredibly naive, although I never would have thought myself so. My Bullshit Radar was undeveloped. Now it's fully developed, and it can be a really useful tool. But it leads me to want to call bullshit, usually at work (where I hear bullshit the most), and I'm supposed to be professional, so it really is becoming a professional liability. How do I make myself less passionate about stupidity? Gah.
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Real Estate?
ReplyDeleteGood guess, but it's the front entry area in a law enforcement office.
ReplyDeleteDo you book'em or stuff'em?
ReplyDeleteWell, I greet 'em and register 'em. That is, greet people at the front counter, and register the sex offenders.
ReplyDeleteSo you're the first person everyone encounters when they're generally "in extremus." Lucky you! ;) You ALSO hold the "keys" to "access" in your hot little hands. And you get to hear all about how the devil made 'em do it, the Sex Offenders Registry is BS and YOU personally are an affront to their basic morality and decency.
ReplyDeleteYeah, right. Besides Combat Vets (Vietnam, my area of interest) I also dealt with all the Sex Offenders: It's ALWAYS the victim/child's "fault." One guy sat in my office and half-assed admitted to his recurrent offenses over a period of YEARS and stated emphatically, "Well, she got up in my lap and wiggled around so she MUST have WANTED it." "She" was his 3 yr. old child. He HAD to admit to some offenses as part of a plea deal...which begs-among other questions-where the hell was MOMMY while all this was going on?!
Some days I bet you just wanna hit a good, long, hot shower with lots of soap the minute you get in the door. There are some offenses that are so odious you'd have to be just as lacking in conscience to not be completely repulsed. Hand 'em the forms, answer any questions (I learned very quickly illiteracy is generally a given in this remote, impoverished area) and keep lots of hand sanitizer in your desk. Attorneys also provide all kinds of slimy, obnoxious, rude behavior in their "repertoire." It's not YOU they're responding to, it's what you REPRESENT. Which is a direct reflection of who and what they're about.
TW
Some of the sex offense investigations that come through our office are horrifying to me because I realize how inappropriate my father was with me. His inappropriateness was psycho-sexual in nature, and I look at some of these files and gag, because some of the things that were said to me, some of the inappropriate closeness, now seems like grooming, like waiting for the opportunity to make his move. I think he knew I would tell someone, and he worked away from home most of my adolescent life, and that's what kept it where it went. I am fortunate I never had to find out if that was something that he was hoping for, but I have too many memories of brown-slime-coated comments that I wish I could forget. It's really hard to see these convicted people come in and I know that they did worse than my father and have them tell me when they're filling out the form that what they're writing under "What Happened" is what allegedly happened when they were falsely accused by the victim. Fuckers.
ReplyDeleteAye, and what a number these comments/invading your space/"hugs" do to us! Those "brown-slime-coated comments" render an adolescent young woman yet MORE self-conscious about her developing body. We can't help or do a damn thing about our developing breasts, our waistlines that flare out into hips and our "booties." The pointed "comments," salacious looks and innuendos, touchy-feely stuff are just...awful. Add alcohol to the mix and it gets worse yet.
ReplyDeleteI believe you're right-you were being groomed. I don't know how you got the point across to him that you WOULD "tell someone" but that was your best-and likely only "defense." Bess, you were very "resourceful" even as a kid.
I'm so sorry you're being exposed to this stuff as a Professional adult.
TW
(sigh) I meant in your Professional life AS and adult.
ReplyDeleteTW
I think having to deal with this stuff is for a reason; maybe, it's what I need to do to grow beyond. It's a friggin' struggle, though.
ReplyDelete