A lot of life at the halfway house was much more relaxed than in prison.  Counts weren’t a timed activity; a staff member simply walked around with a clipboard, marking down everybody he or she saw until they’d gotten everybody on the list of who was supposed to be on-site at the time.  Meals were at scheduled times (and breakfast quite early), but dinner was served three times a night.  As long as you had a reason for not being able to make the earliest dinner, they allowed you to eat at the second.  The third dinner was reserved for those who couldn’t make it back from work in time; you had to sign up for that in advance, just as you had to sign up in advance if you were going to take a bag lunch with you to work (which officially you HAD to do if you were working unless you were employed at an eatery, because you weren’t allowed to walk off the job site during work hours…I’d learn all about these rules later).

I ate my dinner and tried to settle in.  Falling asleep was actually a bit difficult for me, which I attributed to the foreign surroundings.  Of course, it might have helped if my roommates were interested in going to bed.  They liked to stay up late, watching DVDs or playing some kind of video game.  Things of this nature were allowed in the room, to a limit of one TV and one video game system per room, as long as they were owned by a resident of the halfway house.  When the guy who owned the TV was leaving for good, somebody else would bring one in.  DVDs were also permitted, but as you might expect pornography was not.  That didn’t stop my roommates from popping in a porno DVD whenever possible.  Trust me, it’s hard to sleep when six undersexed guys are gathered around a TV groaning and ooh-ing at two women going to town on each other.  Because I was new in the room, and one of only two white guys for the time being, I had two benign methods for getting around this late-night entertainment: first, I could put my headphones in and try to fall asleep to talk radio or a baseball game, which sometimes worked; second, I could make them all uncomfortable by walking in the room, finding the porno on, staring at it for a few seconds with my mouth wide open, pointing at the screen, and saying something like “Oh my God…that’s my SISTER!”  Nobody would believe me for more than a second or two, but I guess it put things into a less festive perspective, and voices would be noticeably lower for the rest of the night.

Of course that wasn’t the only thing which made sleep difficult in the halfway house.  There was also the constant low-volume ring of cell phones, all night long.  We weren’t allowed to have cell phones, and the pat-down searches we received sometimes when coming in from work might allow one to be discovered, but the rarity of that happening led me to believe that at least a few of the staff members were receiving cash “gifts” from clients to not look at things too closely.  Usually these late night interruptions were from women, which would result in whispered sweet nothings…although sometimes in their sleepy stupor a guy would think the woman calling was his girlfriend instead of his baby’s mama, and a stage-whispered argument would ensue.  But not all the calls were personal in nature.  Within my first week I know that, even half-asleep, I was able to hear what sounded like drug deals being arranged for the following day, or instructions to underlings on how to handle collection matters.  This wasn’t like prison, where everybody kept their business to themselves; here, it was back to business as usual for the career criminals.

The following morning I was introduced to the “shared chore” system of the halfway house.  Each room had a chart on the door, and every week the residents would rotate between one custodial job in the room to another.  One week you’d have clean the sinks and toilets in the commode room; another week it was sweep and mop the floor; etc.  My job this first week was (not surprisingly) the one most hated: clean the shower stalls (of which there were two in a room of our size).  I’d already noticed the day before just how filthy these were; clearly nobody had been doing much of a job.  So I went to the front desk, was directed to the cleaning supplies (gloves, scouring powder, paper towels, and some sort of liquid cleanser), and went to work at the mess.  I scrubbed for about 20 minutes, put everything away, and initialed the sheet to show I’d completed my task.  But when I returned from breakfast, the staff member on duty had marked it as “not completed to satisfaction.”  I looked around and found “Manny,” the staff member.  I’m not sure what his game was; it could be that because I was one of the few white residents he expected me to carry some sort of racist attitude, or that he wanted some cash, or simply that this ball-busting was something he did to all the new residents to figure out how they acted.  But even though I was irritated (and keep in mind, this is not a small issue; if you don’t complete your tasks in an “approved” fashion, it can affect your visits, future passes, and just about any other privilege you could earn) I remembered the rule of thumb I’d used to get by in prison: this wasn’t my house, it was THEIR house.  So I had to follow their rules.

I think I really saw a look of shock (as surprise would be too light of a word) when I caught Manny off-guard with my approach.  I apologized that the showers weren’t up to his standards, but as it was my first day I wasn’t exactly sure the best way to get things clean enough.  I proceeded to ask him to show me the spots I most blatantly missed, and to offer some advice or tricks on how to do the job better.  After five minutes of this, Manny got tired of it and just asked me to do better next time, changing his remark on the sheet to “completed.”  I knew that without question, whoever had been assigned the task for the prior week or two had done zero cleaning.  But why they were able to get away with that was not my concern.  I just had to get along with the system, such as it was.

Later that day it was time for orientation to begin.  This was where I had the “pleasure” of being introduced to Miss Fosse, the “Employment Counselor.”  She clearly hated her job, mistrusted everybody, and had no interest in helping anyone do anything.  She had us fill out forms describing our work experience and skills, which were promptly filed and ignored forever.  She had no job leads to offer, no ideas or hints, nothing.  And there was no time for any of that anyway – we had a total of ten days to find a minimum of 30-hour-per-week employment or we would potentially be written up.  Because I’d taken the Residential Drug and Alcohol Program in prison, I was living in this halfway house on a supposed “zero tolerance” policy; if I was written up once, that was all they needed to send me back to prison if that’s what they felt like doing.  And there was no workable appeals process.  I was going to have to find a job, FAST.

So, as you might expect, I immediately had the roadblocks laid out for me, one by one.  First, I was not allowed to go out and seek employment yet, because I hadn’t been seen by the doctor and medically cleared.  The doctor only came in on Tuesdays.  This was Thursday.  I would be stuck, sitting around the halfway house, until then.  Oh, and the even better news was those days COUNTED against this “ten day” time limit to find employment.  Even better: those were CALENDAR days, not business days.  So by the time I cleared medical and was allowed to go out and look for work, I would be at day 7 out of 10.  Oh, except that since I had to be cleared before I could submit my search schedule, I wouldn’t be allowed to go out and look for work until day 8.  Wonderful!

In the meantime, it was suggested that I make use of the halfway house’s materials to look for work over the phone.  Those “materials” included a huge stack of yellow pages, which were more than a year old.  There were also a few “free” employment newspapers in stands, which never had anything in them but ads for employment education programs – “Learn to be a Dental Assistant.”  At least there was the daily paper to look through, except there was only one copy for 60+ inmates, and inevitably the employment section would disappear before 8am.  It would turn up again, after 7pm, or perhaps the following morning…or never.  There was no computer or internet access, so job hunting was fully old-school.

This left my “job hunt” activities to be very limited.  While Heather helped, faxing my resume to any ad she could find in the paper or online, I was left to flip through the yellow pages, day after day, trying to figure out who might be hiring.  I’d make a list of a few places, wait my turn for the free “business only” phone, and call.  There were only two questions to ask.  “Are you hiring?” and “Do you accept applicants with a conviction on their record?”  The answer to number two was almost always yes, because unless it is a business with some sort of security issue, they ALL accept applications from felons; they just won’t HIRE you.  And for the first question, you heard “yes” about one time out of six, “we’re always accepting applications” half the time, and discovered the place had closed (or the phone number had changed) the rest of the time.  Then you’d hand the phone off to the next person, and wait for your next turn.

It isn’t as if any of this was useful, because let’s pretend they told you “yes, we’re hiring, come in for an interview right away.”  Nope, sorry, no go.  You needed to submit your job search travel schedule the day before.  So you’d have to wait until the next day…unless, like me, you weren’t cleared yet, in which case what were you supposed to do, say “can I come in next week to apply for this minimum wage job which you’ll have filled by noon tomorrow?”  It was a frustrating, depressing waste of time.  But I had nothing else to do, so I made a ton of calls a few hours a day, and spent the rest of my time reading.

Not surprisingly, the resume faxes did very little to generate any job leads.  Oh, I did get ONE phone call from one of the maybe 100 resumes Heather sent.  Because we didn’t have phones, the calls would come to the front desk, and the staff would take a message and let them know you’d call them back.  It was a less-than-optimal system.  First, they’re calling what they think is someone’s house, and get “Volunteers of America, can I help you?” instead.  Assuming they choose to leave the message (often after being rudely asked “is this a personal call?  We can only take messages regarding employment!”) you had to hope it found its way to you.  A company nearby was looking for a dispatcher, and I suppose my experience at Amerifleet sounded good to them.  So they called, and left a message.  An hour later when I walked by the front desk, I was told “Oh, Doug, we have a message for you.”  I stood there for about 20 minutes while they searched.  Nope, can’t find it.  Wonderful.  Finding a job was going to be sooooo easy. 

I don’t mean to imply they never found the message.  Two days later I was told they’d finally found it.  When I went to the front desk, they’d lost it again.  Then they found it, at last, an hour later.  It was scribbled on a square sticky note, with an illegible company name.  The phone number was wrong; it went nowhere.  I wasn’t surprised in the least.  I simply felt more hopeless, and depressed that Heather was taking such effort to help which appeared to be wasted energy and time.

Before I was able to go out and look for work, Heather came down and brought me some clothes and other items I’d need.  This was my first face-to-face glimpse of her since I’d left more than 30 months earlier.  I can’t even begin to describe the overwhelming emotions…I was so happy to see her, but it also felt very uncomfortable (especially as I was not really supposed to have true contact with her, as it wasn’t a visiting session).  I could also feel some tension rising from Heather’s side, which I learned later was because she had some fear of how easily we would be able to slip back into the magical connection we’d felt when we first met and fell in love.  30 months is a long time, and we’d both changed some in that span, but I didn’t think it was going to be a major problem.  And, of course, she worried about whether I’d still find her as beautiful and desirable as I had before…which from my standpoint was just as silly as how nervous she was on our first date.  How could I not see how incredibly gorgeous and sexy she was, is, and always will be?  Heather is one of those women who will still be beautiful when she’s in her 70’s…older, yes, but unquestionable beautiful.  (I still don’t see how I got so lucky after years of bad choices and bad luck).

I was given the opportunity to spend an afternoon away from the halfway house even before my medical clearance: a group of us were driven to a special meeting where Dallas was announcing some broad new programs to help those with criminal records.  Miss Fosse was very insistent that we all go, as she’d heard such wonderful things about all the new training and hiring programs.  This wouldn’t just make it easier for us to find jobs…it would make her life simpler too.  The meeting was about three hours long, and it only took me about thirty minutes to realize it was a complete waste of time.  Ignoring all the talk by the speakers regarding how this program was designed especially to help minority felons (of which I am not one), I also came to understand that in order to use the job-placement assets this program could provide, you needed to complete three to four weeks of specialized training AND have two interviews with the administrators.  After a while, Miss Fosse even became disillusioned, and raised her hand to ask what this program could do for those clients she was in charge of, as none of us had the kind of time horizon they were talking about; we needed jobs FAST.  Unfortunately, they admitted there wasn’t really anything which would help us.  It was (like every program I have encountered before or since) designed for state or county felons, not Federal.

Finally, after a week or delays, I was ready to head out and look for work.  With the phone books and faxes doing nothing, I had to nail down a plan.  Miss Fosse was only willing to provide me with a four hour pass, which really didn’t leave much time for job hunting, especially since it took 20 minutes to get from the door of the halfway house to the nearest transit station, and another 30 to get to any reasonable location where you might find work.  I’d found a job in the paper which two other clients had been able to get work through during my wasted week, but they weren’t interested in hiring anybody else from the halfway house after that.  Their reasons were common ones I would discover during my job hunt.  First, if you hired one of us you had to be willing to deal with Miss Fosse; she would show up for on-site visits once a week, having forms to be signed and reviews to be made.  Then there were the random calls from the halfway house, often at least once a day, to confirm that you were actually at work like you were supposed to be.  A lot of clients got fake jobs from friends, and then spent their time hanging out with buddies, or reintroducing themselves to the criminal lifestyle.  There was also the issue of the lack of initiative most of the halfway house clients possessed; it was not at all rare for somebody to go to work for a day or two and then just stop showing up, because they didn’t like the job.  Overall, hiring a felon who lived in the halfway house was a lot of extra work for the business, with very little reward.  True, there was a tax credit they could apply for, but the felon had to keep the job for 60 days (I think it was) before the application was valid.  So many people quit, or did such a piss-poor job that they’d be fired, that the tax credit was not a realistic incentive.

Because I’d lived in Dallas, I figured my best plan was to hit one major retail area and apply for jobs at every store there.  That way I’d take the van to the train to a bus, arrive at my destination, walk from store to store, and then head back.  Two hours was the maximum amount of time I’d have to fill out applications and talk to managers.  The first obstacle: you have to list every single place you are going to go on your job search form, with address and phone number, in advance.  I couldn’t be sure what stores were still at this shopping center and which had closed, or what new retail outlets had opened.  The phone books were only useful if you knew the name of the business.  Still, I managed to get five stores down on the list, with the information.  This led to the second obstacle: Miss Fosse herself.  She did not believe anybody when they put a lot of locations on their list; to her it was simply an attempt to appear busy while you’re out having sex, drinking, or who knows what else.  I actually had to argue with her and show her that all these stores were in the same plaza, within walking distance of each other.  Finally she signed off on the form, but then reminded me that I was forbidden to apply at any store NOT on my list.  In other words, if there was a business there I had forgotten about, or which hadn’t existed when I went to prison, the only way I could try to apply for a job would be to call them later and then use up ANOTHER day to travel there and get an application.  Fat chance.

About this time is when I realized my third obstacle: I needed my driver’s license and Social Security card to secure employment…the identification which the prison had somehow lost.  So I’d need to use my second day of job hunting (as I’d already gotten approval for the first day, I wasn’t about to change things around) to go downtown and try to resolve that nightmare.  Fortunately I’d had Heather bring me my birth certificate from home when she brought the clothes.  A few phone calls had led me to believe that I’d be able to use that to get a new copy of both my license (which was not expired; I had renewed it a few months before leaving Texas) and my Social Security card.  With luck, I could do both in the same day.  In the meantime, I figured that if someone wanted to hire me I could promise to bring appropriate ID on my first day of work. 

Finally I learned the fourth obstacle: it was my responsibility to maintain contact with the halfway house.  “Full accountability” was the name they used for the policy.  What this meant was I had to call the halfway house just after arriving at, and just before leaving, each of my destinations.  Unfortunately, this meant I’d have to call them in between EACH business I went into.  First I’d call when I got off the bus, then go to the first store on the list, apply, get a signature on my sheet to show I had been there (whether or not they were hiring), and then waste precious time (and 50 cents) to call on a pay phone back to the halfway house, so they could mark off my completion of my first location and my intention to proceed to the next one.  To me this was the stupidest of all the rules.  After all, the stores were RIGHT NEXT TO each other!  But my attempt to argue from a position of logic and reason did nothing to help…if anything, it only made Miss Fosse and the staff more suspicious of my intentions.  Nobody else seemed to be complaining, so why was I?  Of course, as I’d learn throughout my time there, that was because most of the other clients were using fake jobs, cell phones with no caller ID on them, or any other number of ways to outwit the system that I was so desperately trying to follow (including bribing staff members, in my opinion).  I hadn’t been in the halfway house long enough to believe that the rules made success next to impossible…so I was going to do things their way as long as I could.  With the “zero tolerance” policy hanging over my head, a screw up wouldn’t just mean giving up the six months I was due to spend split between the halfway house and home confinement; it would also mean giving up the five months I had taken off my sentence for completion of the Residential Drug and Alcohol Program.  In effect, if I broke the rules blatantly enough, the Federal Marshalls would just pick me up and send me back to Pennsylvania to spend almost another year locked up (something which I saw happen to four or five clients during my time at the halfway house).  Plus, this wouldn’t be a bus ride on Greyhound.  Instead, I’d spend two to three months in the Federal transfer system, moving from rat hole to rat hole until I’d made my way back.  Maybe I’d enjoy a few weeks in solitary confinement in Fort Worth?  Or six weeks sleeping on a folding cot in Oklahoma, in a huge way station where pigeons that roosted in the rafters crapped all over the inmates (of their blankets if you were smart enough to stay covered all night long)?  No thank you.  I just wanted to get through this nightmare and get home to Heather, and to Tigger who somehow had survived in decent health despite being 20 years old by now.  I couldn’t believe that nobody had ever been able to find a job this way…some clients had to succeed, and I was determined to be one of them, even if it nearly killed me in the process.