[Rewards] pine tree cosplay part 1 (Patreon)

okay, first up, the same old same old. the following applies to patrons who joined or leveled up in the month of November:

• New patrons have been added to the credits list; the credit list has been updated for the public release too! I've used forum names wherever possible and Patron names otherwise. If you want to be listed as something else in specific please comment or message me and let me know!
• Level 5 accounts have been hooked up to the forum supporter status-- once again very apologies to those who joined hoping to get Alpha access after it was too late. I know that kind of sucks. Rest assured I appreciate you being here no less... though as it is I've already had one person who I think has sort of gamed that system so I've had to exercise a certain level of caution.
• Messages have been sent out to Level 10's, and for calling anything higher in, just shoot me a message back!
• If I have in any way missed you please let me know so we can figure the Things out!

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okidokey cosplay time. get ready to wash those hands cuz i'm gonna get sappy up in here.
i mean... not that i don't a little bit most months... but this is the one year anniversary of me actually being on patreon.
so. you know
that's
significant
(mind-blowing)

this may be old news for those of you beautiful souls who have been with me since then but we're going to have a bit of a story time here. hey, what else am i gonna do during testing-- make real development posts?? pfffffffbtttchbbhfdjshfjdf fdfd-----

so, for a few years before this, i was working at an independent living home which is like a halfway house but for people coming out of jail. specifically we worked with teenage boys, and most of those boys had been in the system since they were 13, 14, sometimes younger, and had a mandatory parole when they turned 21. at that point they -must- leave the system and live on their own or with family no matter what. 

the problem with that is when you've been told what to do for the last eight years of your life, you don't know how to do basic adult things like hold down a job or stay sober in a city that wants to shove pot down your throat (seriously, you can't go two blocks here without finding a dispensary, and the boys' home was right in the thick of it-- awful location, just wretched). so, they would come to us in the months leading up to their parole, and we would help them learn to try and be normal adults. 

you know the orderlies in sigmund's orphanage? i was basically one of those. although i didn't wear a white outfit; i wore my cat ear headphones like always. and i didnt join up with an evil team. well, not as far as you all know. ...but i made that orphanage area long before i worked in that kind of setting. im not sure offhand what i would do differently if i were to make it now... unfortunately one key point for the orphanage in reborn was that its upper hand was abusive as all heck. i would like to say that was different in my company.. but unfortunately, i would be lying.

i'll explain a bit about my company's structure. it was organized per state, and in our state there were three branches*. one was in my city, one was in the mountains, and one was in the south. each of the three served different populations. ours was juveniles as i described before. the mountain facility was for boys with developmental disabilities. and the southern facility... mm, i'll get there in a bit.

*apparently there was actually a secret hidden fourth facility in a city an hour away from here, but it only had one employee, no clients, and nobody even knew about it including the executive director in the state until we heard it had been shut down and we were all like ??????????

so all... let's just say three... all three facilities in the state shared an income. it was a for-profit company after all, so there was the understanding that if the facilities were not profitable, they would be shut down. our pay came from the state and government-- for each client (i.e, youth in residence) we had, we would be given a certain monthly amount. for my facility, we had a capacity of 12. given the cost of keeping the place staffed, our break even point was at 7-8 clients. anything less than that and we would be losing money. 

for most of the time i was there we had 2-4.
ouch.

it wasn't much different for the mountain facility either. they usually had 4 i think, and similar costs. why not just get more clients??? well there are two reasons for this. one is that the youth services (read: youth corrections) department was moving away from residential treatments as a whole because they were often times not very effective (takes more than a few months to change lifelong habits and build skills-- and also kids keep running away). the other reason was because our directors kept quitting. aside from the executive director the state, i was the most senior staff there after just a year. 

it's a stressful job after all. i could tell you a lot of stories. some of those boys are outright vile-- they've gotten their way through violence and intimidation their whole lives, and it's all they know. so if they get a little bit upset they default to yelling, screaming-- throwing, hitting. we were trained in self defense, but not very well. one of my coworkers was chased around the house by a client with a knife. she locked herself in the bathroom and call the police. they had to practically peel the kid away from the locked door as he tried to break in. i had a kid jump out the second story window after he smuggled acid into the program. another one on spice started running naked through the house. one cilent set off a fire extinguisher inside a moving vehicle and almost crashed the whole thing. the other night staff was beaten in an inch of his life and then was almost killed-- strangled with a telephone cord... by a person with no legs. that one was a little bit impressive tbh. 

and any time something happened, which was usually every couple days, the director had to be called. sometimes at 3 am, they would have to come over and sort things out, or at least give instructions. tough position. our directors never lasted more than a year. the problem with that is that the director is the one who chooses what clients we get, and it takes a balance of compromise and discretion to choose ones who are right for the program. without an experience director, we either got bad clients or no clients. so we stayed at 2-4 clients, a hole in the company's pocket.

but that's not the real problem.
the real problem was the reason we were able to stay afloat-- the southern facility. 

i have never been there. i hoped never to go.  but we did share staff-- they wanted me to head down there and do some work on their computers (i made some great strides by cleaning ours up and installing keytracers).  and we shared stories. our self-defense training was done by the head supervisor from there, who were are going to call jeff, and one coworker i particularly adored went on to be the director there.

poor thing...

the southern facility, as it has been described to me, is a much larger bunker out in the middle of nowhere. it is fenced in with barbed wire. there are turrets posted outside the facility, ready to lock onto anyone who tries -- but i've never heard of them being used. colorado is an arctic desert. as jeff informed us, when a client tried to run, the staff would do the following:

• stand in the doorway after the client has left
• smile
• wave good bye
• go back in and wait for the client to return on his own because it's probably either 0 or 110 degrees outside and there's nowhere to run to.

no, seriously. this is that place:

there's actually nowhere to go.

like the mountain facility, the southern facility also treated developmental disability folk... but as jeff explained it, they take the ones "that are even lower functioning than people who would be in a mental asylum". and unfortunately, unlike our 4-client soiree, that place was booming. usually at least 20 clients at any given time, because i suspect that's where they send people who no one else wants to take. we certainly did that a couple times, and although it was a necessary measure, i could not help but cringe.

because i had heard what went on there.

jeff was a big, hearty guy. all bulk. they liked those big guys down there-- because when a client is out of control and flinging their own shit across the room, or trying to tear the hair out of anyone who comes near them, or having a meltdown and breaking anything they can get their hands on, then they need big guys to be able to restrain the kids. i was trained in restraints too, though i never need them. down there, they were a daily occurrence. and big hearty guy jeff-- he liked to brag.

we had these self defense and restraint trainings every 6 months by law, so as the only one who actually stuck around for long, i got to know him fairly well over those sessions. i remember one time he got a little carried away and started telling us, his class, just a """funny story""" about, how, oh, when you're restraining kids down in the south-- well, you know, it's stressful. and you've gotta take them down, hand on their head, their face on ground-- well, he told us about this one client who, i don't remember what, had bit him or something, and he was mad. so he laughs and says, you know, i just-- i just casually SLAMMED his head against the stone bench, and then, you know, it's a concrete floor, and we're restraining him, they always resist restraints so really it's not our fault if he gets hurt, so we can just SLAM his head against the floor, like-- oho, you get it.
good stress relief.
good abuse.
i understood that was not an isolated occurrence. 

and this was the supervisor talking this way-- to employees. this kind of thing was being not only allowed, but practically encouraged. i was disgusted.
but he went on.

he reminded us that any client who feels like he's been mistreated is allowed to file a grievance report. grievances have to be reviewed by the facility supervisor, and facility director, and then acted on within 24 hours.
there were three problems here. firstly, jeff was the supervisor, so he was obviously not going to follow up on any grievance that would come back to him. secondly, the director, as jeff told us, didn't actually read the grievances herself (this was the old director, not the one i adored)-- she just left them to him.
the third problem was the mental intelligence of those clients.
most of them could not read, let alone write.
how the fuck were they supposed to stand up for themselves and write a grievance about them being abused???

i love my job, jeff boasted with a shit-flinging grin. best job in the world.
because he had the unique position and authority to take all of his stress out on his clients.
and no one could do anything about it.

because here's the problem-- when i was hired, the director of my facility told me that they had to specifically screen for people this: people who wanted to work at these facilities for the sake of having control and power over these youths. those are the people who would abuse them. so we screen against them, but with jeff, it seemed one slipped through. worse, he made it to the supervisor position. 

but if we use our sociological imagination here... this scenario is almost tautological. as i described before, the turn over rate for that job was incredibly high, from floor staff to director. we were almost always understaffed, and new staff had trouble adjusting, old staff were burning out, and it was always difficult. stressful-- with kids exploding and running and jacking off in your face on a near daily basis. who would stick around for that?
well, i probably only was able to because i was night staff and had limited interaction with them, and because i had the magic of emotional dissociation on my side.
jeff was able to because they were his punching bags.

and any supervisor needs to be experienced. i am certain i would have gotten the position had i applied, but reborn was more important to be so i didn't.
but he had.
and he, also, was the only person they could have chosen to be supervisor, because he was the only person who had lasted long enough to have the experience for it.
and he would surely not be the only one across all such facilities in the country, and over various decades of this practice.

in other words, i was quite sure this was not an isolated incident. despite screening against abusive staff, these facilities are almost necessarily set up to create a space for them to exercise their anger free of consequence.
the clients cannot speak up for themselves, the staff will not defend them-- who does that leave, the boss?

the executive director of our state.
she was a peach. often stressed out but handled it famously. very kind. she cared. i'm sure she would not have wanted that situation to continue.
unfortunately, her hands were a bit tied.
because as i said before, with roaring 20's of clients, the southern facility was the only one who was actually making money in the state. that facility was single-placedly carrying our city's and the mountain home.
so if she fired the leading staff from there, what would happen?
presumably, that place would fall apart, and it would lose clients, and then they would have to downsize and shut down the other two unprofitable facilities.
and she would be out of a job.

there was no winning move.
the entire state's system depended on the income from a facility and worker who incontinently supported physically abusing his clients.
i was revolted.
i considered quitting on the spot.
because i didn't want to be the one benefiting from that money. as night staff, we had it easiest. day staff were in constant contact with those aggro clients, and the higher-ups took the heat. as night staff we were bystanders who just got to sit in the middle and watch it all happen,
and soak up the paychecks,
and work on our video games.

i had considered quitting, but i realized that if i did someone else would just take my spot, and i'd have to find another job-- and probably anything else would not allow me to work on reborn as much as i could there.
so i stayed on that sinking, stinking ship.

but i did talk about it.
sparingly. to several coworkers here and there. i think to the HR person (who was pretty much second to the executive director), my supervisor, and some other folks.
most people agreed with me that it was fucked up.
but that didnt mean there was anything to do about it.

well, you already know the end of the story. unfortunately there isn't a dramatic or decisive conclusion.
some time after that the company did downsize.
they shut us and the mountain facility down, and my friend took over direction of the southern facility.
jeff was fired.
god fucking bless.
if i really wanted to delude myself into believing i did something, i would say maybe it came as a result of me bringing up that fucked up scenario with various people. but it could just as well have been coincidence that he was fired for something else and at the same time the company decided they'd had enough of the city and mountain facilities being dead weight.

so everything was shut down and most of us lost our jobs.
and jeff is gone and the clients down in the south are in much better hands as long as my coworker is there (i still remember the first day i trained her... so proud ;~; )
but that doesn't change the fact that it's the nature of this system in general. there are probably a lot of other clients suffering in the same way out there. we're only one state, after all. and we're only one company within this state.
most of others got our jobs back because a different company bought the mountain facility and most of the staff with it.
'cept me. that happened well after i had been let go.
the executive director actually gave me a personal recommendation to a different company-- same type of work. i knew some of the clients there, and i was eventually guaranteed a job. this was back in may.
the cycle would go on after all.
i wasn't keen on slotting back into a system of abuse-- to say nothing of the personal stress since i knew well what kind of work it was.  
so i decided to walk away from it.  

of course you already know why i was able to do that. since as i said back then, i didnt even really expect to be able to live like this-- having you all has been the most wonderful, necessary surprise of my life. 

this post has become rather meandering... i was initially only going to make this a small segment of what i was talking about. but i suppose that's what slapping a 'part 1' onto the post title and pretending it was intended is for... 

but for now, thank you all for setting me free. <3