In and of itself, incarceration, the restriction of liberty and separation from family and community, is a hardship. Sometimes, the conditions of imprisonment create an additional dimension to that hardship. For example, the four week lockdown that we recently experienced at Thomson, during which we were fed turkey and peanut butter sandwiches every day, and denied communications and access to fresh air, increased the burden. If that was not enough, some campers including myself were assigned to work the kitchen to cover for the workers in the main prison who were confined to their cells.
I do not want to be incarcerated. I really did now want to be on lockdown. I most certainly did not want to have to get up at 3:30am to cover someone else’s job because of another person’s poor decisions. And yet those were the circumstances I found myself in for a month. I believe that prison, just like anything in life, is what you make of it. I further believe that hardships can be transformed into assets if they are treated as opportunities for learning and growth.
In Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, author Jordan Peterson described the attitude of gratitude and determination that I strive to bring to life every day, even and especially when confronting challenges. He wrote:
“You can see how demanding life is and can be, and you can see it clearly. Despite this, you can remain grateful, because that is the intrepid attitude toward life and its difficulties. You are grateful not because you are naive, but because you have decided to put a hand forward to encourage the best in yourself, and the state, and the world. You are grateful, in the same manner, not because suffering is absent, but because it is valiant to remember what you have and what you still may be offered–and because the proper thankful attitude toward that existence and possibility positions you better than any other attitude toward the vicissitudes of existence.”
When I left for prison, my commitment to my family was to get stronger in body, mind, and spirit every day. The lockdown and kitchen duty did not excuse me from that commitment. So I resolved to be, borrowing Peterson’s word, a valiant lockdown kitchen worker.
As the exit door nears, I am also focused on maximizing my readiness for successful re-entry. I will be rejoining the workforce when I get home, and I decided to use kitchen duty to practice being a good worker among workers, to get the job done, and to learn what I could from observation of the environment and the people around me. As my dad taught me years ago, every person is a good example of something.
Being possessed of a sound attitude and having my own internal compass, I was prepared to tackle the work. I have noticed that because of the inherent purposelessness of prison, prison jobs fail to bring out the best in people. To perform optimally, we need to know what the point of the work is. Neither the administration nor the staff were going to communicate purpose to me for this assignment. I’d have to find it for myself. Guys on the crew who were focused on “slave labor” or “doing someone else’s job” were undermining themselves. It’s nuts to make a hardship harder. I went in the other direction.
Author and influencer Simon Sinek shared the story of his personal purpose epiphany in his book Start With Why:
“When I first discovered this thing called WHY, it came at a time in my life when I needed it. It wasn’t an academic or intellectual pursuit; I had fallen out of love with my work and found myself in a very dark place.”
I was literally in the dark as I marched along with a couple dozen guys from the camp to the back gate of the main prison for our first day of work. Negativity hung like a thick mist around us in the pre-dawn air. In that moment, I started with why. The purpose of my work was to feed men who were hungry, most of whom, just like me, had done nothing to bring upon themselves the extra punishment they were experiencing. I was not a slave or a scab laborer, I was a feeder of the masses, and that was a purpose worthy of my best effort.
After being wanded, full body scanned, strip-searched, and made to change into a jumpsuit each morning, I was still able to go into the kitchen with my purpose and attitude of gratitude and put in a solid day’s work. Four weeks later, having participated in the preparation of 84,000 meals, I emerged with a high degree of confidence that I can be successful in any work environment. Several takeaways also crystallized as I compared the behaviors of the staff and my coworkers to best practices I’ve learned during my life and career.
First, show up. This principle, which is a cornerstone of my spiritual tradition, seems so simple. It is astonishing to me how many people fail this test. When the kitchen crew lists were originally posted, a frenzy of activity was unleashed. Guys developed a wide range of infirmities and began lobbying the staff to get out of the work. It was embarrassing.
We had a 4:00am work call, but often found ourselves waiting until 4:30am for stragglers. These are grown men and many of them couldn’t get out of bed without multiple wake-ups. As I sat waiting one morning, I recalled an incident from early in my career. I walked into a management meeting late and the owner of the company stopped what he was saying to ask, “Jason, do you care to explain why you think your time is more valuable than the other people in this room?” I did not have an answer to that question, and I never held up the start of a meeting again. His message about respecting my colleagues stuck with me.
Once we were in the kitchen, I witnessed the walking around technique of work avoidance. Some guys would move from one place to another, like doctors on rounds, never doing anything, but always looking like they were on a mission. They were putting forth more effort to avoid the work than doing the work would have taken. I respected the guys who were brazen enough to put their heads down and go to sleep more than the wanderers.
Showing up and doing what is expected of you is about personal integrity. There were men on the crew who clearly did not know this, having never had a real job before. I heard more than one exclaim, “This is the hardest I have ever worked in my life,” after a few hours of putting bread and peanut butter into lunch bags. They have not had positive role models for work ethic and workplace skills, and the staff, who also enjoy a good nap on the job, would not be fulfilling that need.
This brings me to my second takeaway, lead and follow. There have been times in my career when I have been given responsibility without authority. Those situations were often frustrating–who wouldn’t rather be the dictator? But they also taught me invaluable life skills in both leadership and followership that allowed me to be influential without authority while still producing results.
Prison is filled with hierarchical authority, but very little accountability. It is often hard to hard to tell who is in charge. Add to that environment the natural oppositional disposition of many incarcerated people and you typically get dysfunctional chaos rather than effective teamwork.
In the kitchen, a few of our staff supervisors worked with us and gave us direction, but for the most part, they stayed in their office and left us to figure out how to get the job done. A dynamic of too many chiefs filled the void at first. Ultimately, guys stepped up to provide leadership, and we organized ourselves to complete the work somewhat efficiently.
I was assigned to a job preparing certified (kosher, halal, etc.) meals that kept me mostly out of the fray, but I did pitch in when I had time. In those instances, I tried to model good followership when one of the guys had taken charge and was doing well. In the less organized moments, I diplomatically stepped up to provide leadership, and because I took pains not to disrespect anyone or be bossy, most of the guys followed along.
This approach extended to my interactions with the officers. There was such a high volume of pre-packaged food items coming into the kitchen and going out in bagged meals that the administrator was having trouble keeping track, and we often ran out of items we needed. I was asked to help set up a staging and backstock area that would be more organized. I gently suggested a better approach to that concept and they let me take care of it. My solution was well-received and made the work of the meal assembly team simpler. No feathers were ruffled, and in the process, both the administrator and my comrades were influenced to follow my lead through the system.
That experience dovetailed with my final takeaway, communicate. Especially during times of high stress, communication is critical, a lesson I learned doing turnaround work in small to midsized businesses. Some of the guys don’t know how to interact with the staff, and vice versa. And almost nobody is skillful in productively dealing with conflict or sensitive issues.
I was taught that when receiving an assignment, I best be crystal clear on what I was being asked to do and the expected outcomes. If my supervisor’s directions were unclear, it was on me to ask clarifying questions, not guess. When the job was done, I was to report back. I approached my interactions with the officers and my fellow campers in this way when they made requests of me. They never had to be bothered with following up. I proactively removed that burden from them. Improved rapport and trust was the result. Wherever possible, I sought out direction from the officers, tightened it up, and passed it along verbally or in writing. I tried to set my colleagues up for success and head off potential problems.
At appropriate moments, I also pulled guys aside to have low-key coaching conversations. In order for a team to be effective, its members need to be able to give and receive constructive feedback, and I did my best to model that practice, even with our supervising officers. I talked to guys about behaving according to one’s own high standards even when others fall short; staying calm amidst chaos; showing respect by showing up on time; and thinking of others in addition to yourself. I don’t know if I shifted any paradigms, but I did my part by passing along valuable wisdom that others imparted to me.
When the lockdown ended and we were released from kitchen duty, I knew that my purpose had been fulfilled. Tens of thousands of meal bags were evidence of that. I had also done a good job of showing up, leading and following, and communicating. Through these practices I made my team better by my presence, and lightened the load of hardship somewhat.
Equally important, I was able to reaffirm a fundamental belief I have about work. That is that any and every job represents an opportunity to be of service to others. I approached my lockdown kitchen duty in this spirit and made a small difference. When I get home, whatever work I do will be approached similarly, and I will make an even bigger difference.
