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Chapter 2: The Kids are Almost Never Held Accountable for Anything They Do

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Almost every week we had meetings. These meetings were meant to be productive, however they often boiled down to circle jerk group thinks as anyone who offered even the most reasonable criticism would be shut down by management. It's kind of amusing actually seeing some of the most bare basic complaints such as "I couldn't keep control over the house because I was the only staff on duty" get shoved out. One of the most common complaints, especially coming from those who are scheduled during the afternoon shift, the shift that works with the kids the most, is that the residents aren't being held accountable.

Some here may recall when I posted around a year ago about three kids from the facility who were going on a rampage in the community. Multiple times they left campus to do such things as steal gift cards and other products from various stores. They went to Walmart and stole BB guns. Although not confirmed I recall them talking about how they attempted to rob someone, though luckily it didn't turn out as planned. Despite all of this not a single thing happened to them. The closest thing they got to a "punishment" was that they couldn't go out for activities or clothing shopping, even though due to being so low staffed they were almost never taken out for these things anyway. Oh, they also had a thirty minute early bed time. That was it, that was their punishment. Everything else remained virtually unchanged.

All three of these boys are still at the house. So, this means that they must have changed their habits right? Not really. After that event the boys continued to do what they had been doing. They actually left the house to steal at least two more times or so. The took the BB guns they stole and hid them in their rooms. I also recall walking around outside and finding two metal baseball bats hidden under some sticks. Could be coincidence...or not. But to really have one understand just how little accountability there is for the boys in the home I'll begin to describe a few cases.

I'll start with a kid called "Kid". That isn't his real name, but I'll give it to him due to the fact that when I left he had a haircut the same as Kid from House Party. He was one of the three boys that engaged in the hooliganism I just described. After this he continued doing basically whatever he wanted. He was a big bully and often intimidated the more timid, and generally much more well behaved, residents. A staff stood up to him and told him that the bullying ends today. As a result the kid begins going on a rampage in the house as he picks up chairs and throws them across the room. The staff would have restrained him but wasn't cleared to restrain yet despite being there for months (more on this in another chapter). Things peaked as the kids breaks the living room window. It turns out that this resulted in him being placed in county juvenile detention center.This means that he will finally get his due right?...Right? Well no. You see what happened is that he was suppose to go to jail after that. But he ended up writing a sob story letter about how he has learned his lesson and just wants to go back home and see his mom again. He talked with the boss of the program manager and gave her the letter. He then began telling her this story. She advocated for him and kept doing so until the judge miraculously budged and let him back to the facility. So what does Kid do the very first night that he get back? He argues with staff, gets mad, and leaves the house again without permission.

Now luckily he didn't go into any stores to steal or  rob anybody, as he stayed on campus. However, it speaks volumes that he would come back and cause trouble the very night he arrived. The next morning he refused to go to school. Staff tried to wake him up to go but he absolutely refused. He continued this not going to school stunt for months. At times it even required him having to call in staff to watch him during the morning as he flatout refused to go to school. He just lied in bed all day. I recall having to call the very same general manager who allowed him to come back multiple times for her to get him out of bed. Usually she would succeeded after babying him for an hour or so, but sometimes even that wouldn't' be enough. Now to be fair eventually he finally started going to school...but was always thirty late doing so. But thirty minutes turned into twenty, twenty turned into ten. But keep in mind this was over the course of almost an entire year. When staff talk to him what he is going to do when he gets back home, he responds that he will do the same thing he has always done...rob people. He is still at the house as of this post and was scheduled to be released back home in the coming weeks.

This next resident is actually a bit different from the rest, at least to me, because unlike most of the other residents in the teenage home I actually had some type of positive relationship with this youth. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that he didn't have his own set of problems. To quickly describe him he is currently 18 years old, 6'7, and 200+lbs. Due to his size I'll call him Andre. While he regularly goes to school, he doesn't have a job. He also rarely participates in tasks or activities in the house in any form. His room is a dump, literally, and smells like one too. All he does all day is one thing. He lays on his bed and plays his Nintendo 2DS all day, usually Super Smash Bros. or some type of Zelda game. In fact I believe his love for video games, especially Nintendo, is what made us bond so well as that is what we talked about half the time.

While comes off as a gentle giant most of the time, he just doesn't follow routine at all. Whether it is chores, coming out for group, or even eating in the dining room he just stays in his room playing video games. To give you an idea of just how much he plays, he showed me how many hours he clocked into Super Smash Bros. after he had it for a month. He clocked in in well over 300 hours. Keep in mind unlike Kid, Andre actually goes to school whenever it is scheduled. So around seven hours of his day is dedicated to school and another couple hours dedicated to sleep. This would have to mean he spends virtually his entire day when he isn't' at school or sleeping playing Super Smash Bros. Don't believe me? Go do the math right now on a calculator.

He also refuses to go leave the house for almost any reason. He needs to get blood work or see a doctor in general? Refuses to go. He needs to go get his state ID so he can get a job? He refuses to get his picture taken due to strange reasons nobody can understand. This is his entire thought process. It is very difficult to get him to do much of anything.

While he does have problems not doing routine, the highlight issue for him is that...well he at times attacks staff. The first incident of this occurred with the program manager. Andre was being disruptive and in one of his "I don't give a fuck moods", and attempted to go into the kitchen because he felt like it. The program manager blocked his way. As a result Andre raged into fury and began punching the program manager. Staff and other residents tried to get Andre off of the program manager. After the incident no charges were filed on Andre. Due to our relationship being on a good note, I actually talked with Andre about his actions the previous day. Andre refused to take responsibility for his actions and kept stating the reason why he beat the program manager up was because "who was he to tell me what to do when he is never here". I explained to Andre why that thinking was wrong, even though way back in my mind I agreed with him to a very small degree.

A few months later we hired another staff. He was very experienced and looked like he could throw his weight around. He had a good first two weeks or so, until an incident with Andre. One night Andre began doing whatever he wanted. The new staff challenged Andre by telling him he had to go to his room. As a result Andre walked up to him and began hitting him. Since there were no staff available who could stop Andre at the time (more on this later), the police were called. It turns out by the time they came Andrew calmed down. This didn't stop the staff from having cuts and bruises on his face. He stated that before he left to go home for the night that he would press charges on Andre. The staff never heard from again and Andrew never had charges pressed on him. I'm still not sure what happened, but that is all I know.

The final resident I will talk about is the most infamous one while I was there. He was the one who was the mastermind of most of the theft, break-ins, and robberies. I'm going to call this killed "Jackoff", yeah Jackoff, seems to fit him right. Anyway Jackoff is a 14 year old, 6'4, 200+lbs youth. He is by far the worst kid we have in the teenage home. He regularly is disrespectful to staff as he constantly tells everyone to fuck off. He hits kids regularly and shows him his dick pressuring them to have sex with him (more on this later), nearly every single time he is out on the community he steals, and worst of all he never does any of these things without a fallguy, so he constantly pressures his peers through intimidation to do so. I have literally heard him say word for word to another resident "leave campus with me or else I will sneak inside your room later".

Things usually work by taking to or outright pressuring kids to go on run with him. Then he will sneak out of his window and knock on his peers room windows. They will climb out of their windows and leave. Things have done besides what I already listed include breaking into the downstairs recreational room to "play pool" or breaking into one of the abandoned buildings on campus. The thing is, him leaving the house is when he is the least problematic. While in the house he constantly walks out of his room doing whichever he pleases. He may tone this down if there is a muscular staff on duty to take him down, but when he knows nobody can stop him he does as he pleases. He goes into his peer's rooms, he walks up to the living room, he walks outside. He pretty much does as he pleases. All the while cursing at staff who challenge him. During the meetings people constantly complain about him. Most of the management believe that the reason why he acts this way is because staff on duty aren't doing enough to punish him. Staff responds that they can't do much since they are often scheduled with only two staff at a time, and Jackoff may be young but he is still large and heavy. Management then replies that Jackoff is mostly "just talk" and that he has never assaulted a staff before. This was their ultimate, terrible, argument. That on duty staff were just too afraid to deal with Jackoff due to his bark, despite him lacking bite. The day before I left the job, I called one of my coworkers. I talked to him how I brought something from him and it no longer works. He agreed he would pay me back. I asked him how his day was, and he said terrible. When I asked why he said he was working the shift in the teenage home and it went off the chain today. I asked to explain he stated that all the staff in the entire campus had to go to the teenage home due to the fact that Jackoff attacked a staff member.

I wish I can say that this bullshit was limited to these three individuals but it isn't. I thing that I have to mention in this chapter is the sheer amount of entitlement so many of these kids have. If you tell some of these kids "no" for something they will literally begin to flipout. No, I'm not talking about stuff like saying no to something like "you can't go on activity due to your behavior", though that is included. I'm more so talking about things like "you have to wait an extra hour until the laundry room open" or "you can't have cereal earlier than you are suppose to because you didn't act right before". These little things have triggered a lot of ridiculous reactions. To me what stands out as a peak example is when one of the most well behaved residents was able to use a iPod he got as a gift from his therapist. He was using it and one of the kids asked if he could see it. Once he had it he grabbed it and ran to his room. This shitstain stated that he wouldn't give the kid his iPod back due to the fact that he and all the other kids couldn't have any interactive electronics anymore, yes at many points of the program it was considered a right to have a video game system or similar devices. When I explained to this shitstain that he can't have an iPod because he doesn't' behave well while the other resident does everything he is suppose to do. Unfortunately that answer wasn't good enough for Shitstain. He continued to use the argument if he can't have something nobody can. Luckily the responsible and mature resident talked Shitstain into giving back his iPod through reasoning and the strength of their "friendship".

While I believe this mass entitlement problem the facility has is partially due to the lack of punishment, it can also be attributed to too much punishment. To elaborate, say that all ten kids are up front watching TV. Two or three of these ten kids misbehave, while all the other ones are quiet doing what they need to be doing. Unfortunately due to the three kids actions, everyone has to go back. Despite the most of the kids being well behaved the entire activity is ruined for everyone. Collective punishment, and it is practiced a wide variety of ways.This easily explains Shitstain's mentality of "if I can't have something, nobody can". To be fair a lot of this is due to the lack of staff who could offer proper supervision, but nevertheless, it is the outcome. Direct accountability is rare.

This could also be due to the fact that at times they keep getting rewarded no matter what. Every week as long they jobs they get allowance anywhere between $5 to $18, depending on what they do. Allowance shopping may be rare, especially for those who usually aren't well behaved. But when they find out that they can finally go after some weeks they find themselves with a lot of cash at hand, even though they were forced to save the money thus they didn't really save it. There is also the fact that they receive a mandatory clothing allowance they get no matter what. This seems great, until you see ho much they get. Around $70. Yes that's right $70, as in just $30 away from $100, a month. What they get per month in clothing is around how much I spend per year. And their clothes really show this. It isn't uncommon to look in their closet and see almost a dozen pairs of Jordans. And they will look down on other who don't wear these clothes. An event that stands out to me is when one of the kids shopped smart by spending less than his $70 on a really slick outfit complete with shoes, jeans, undershirt, and hoodie. He looked great and everyone complimented him, especially with the price since he got it all at TJMaxx. This is what I feel we really should be teaching the kids, you can technically get a lot of what you want, you just be a smart shopper and manage your money correctly. Unfortunately, Jackoff got wind of this and put down the kid who was a smart shopper. I pointed out to Jackoff that the other kid looked better than he did. Jackoff's response? "Yeah, but his clothes aren't name brand though".