The eternally tenured and the unfirable

I went to a Michigan prison to visit an inmate and saw the future of Obamacare. The friend I drove up with (11-hour drive) had sent her visitor application form back in plenty of time, and the inmate had been careful to submit his application a month before our arrival.

Many attempts to ascertain the status of our applications by phone in the week before our arrival were met with uncooperative and surly apparatchiks. I always got the distinct impression that my phone call was interrupting something. I encountered apathy, contradictory information, outright lies, and voice mail on which we left messages but received no return calls. We learned that every piece of paper passes through multiple hands, and I arrived at the arithmetic that efficiency is inversely proportional to the number of hands that handle a paper. Welcome to the land of the eternally tenured and the unfirable.

Without any clearance, my friend and I prayed and just showed up at the prison. We found favor with a CO, who expedited the process and allowed my friend in for a visit. Two days later when we arrived for another visit, we were told by the woman manning the desk that we were not approved. Our plea that we had already been in two days in a row did not move her.

Don't get me started about the mail. Letters to the prison in lower Michigan (not the Upper Peninsula) have lapsed into the fairly dependable rut of a 12- to 16-day arrival time from hand to hand. I phoned to notify the supervisor of the problem. She said there is no problem. She defended her mailroom staff and said they are doing the best they can.

I can't wail till all this is applied to an appointment for a colonoscopy.

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