Random thoughts concerning the Denver Human Services Building…

"Wake up, wake up, get up, it’s the first of the month,
Get up, get up, get up, cash that check, it’s the first of the month…"
-Bone Thugs –n- Harmony, "First of the Month"

Random thoughts concerning the Denver Human Services Building…
And those working in it. And those receiving assistance from it. And then some. The building and its inhabitants are seriously dysfunctional, a system perfectly representing that saying about the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.

Welfare is a conundrum. The liberals have good intentions, but those who occupy influential positions to carry out their directives are surprisingly weak on skills and implementation. Weaker still, are the bulk of employees in the lower echelon of jobs in the building. Many are transitioned from TANF (The System) to Labor Pool (The System), where Human Services uses the potential ones they want to keep, and the ones they can’t place anywhere else.

The conservatives don’t even acknowledge there are people who are truly "unemployable," much less that their numbers are legion. By not addressing the critical problem now, we, as a society are setting ourselves up for a socio-economic disaster the like of which this country has never seen before. It’s just around the corner, waiting. Bush will help the deterioration along quite nicely.


Graduation Day. January 2000

With the advent of Welfare Reform, a number of classes are offered for pre-job training. These classes are basically remedial, the instructors telling people what they should have already known years and years ago on how to find a job. "Be on time for an interview." "Bring your own pen." "Shower and wash your hair." "With shampoo and soap." "Don’t swear at the person conducting the interview." "Don’t show up high." And on. These classes are usually about six weeks long, Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 or 2:00, with an hour for lunch.


This experience is the high school or junior high some of these people never had, and Graduation Day is a big deal. Human Services keeps about 30 blue graduation robes on hand for the every second or third week "Graduation." Festivities consist of a ceremony where friends and family attend and a graduation potluck afterward. The ceremonies are held in a conference room across from the staff cafeteria. So during my normal course of daily activities, I could see portions of all the ceremonies.

The classes are primarily women, with one or two men at the most, in each class. During the ceremony, the instructors would talk about the class and mentions specific anecdotes about all the attendees that are positive and inclusive. The room is filled with boyfriends and babydaddies, and children and mothers, but very few older men. Everyone seems to enjoy the potluck very much.

Before one particular ceremony, I accidentally bumped into a graduate on her way to the proceedings. We stared at each other for a second after impact. The sharpness of her hard beauty, powerful gaze, and double teardrop tattoos of her left eye were startling. Teardrop tattoos around the eyes are code for gang killings or friends lost to violence. They have taken the time to tattoo a teardrop in close proximity to their eyes as a testament to the impact of violence on their lives. Or they are bragging. One should exercise great caution around such people.

I apologized profusely for not looking up and her intensity faded a bit. Her eyes were still dark, but she said, "No problema," and went into the conference room. I saw her later in the cafeteria with her two kids and her tattooed, frowning, angular-featured boyfriend or husband. She was holding her little girl in the air and smiling. For her and the others, this would be a day to remember.

Marie. May 2000

Marie was one of the two women who came into our program together in the spring. After about a day and a half, it was apparent that both of these women had been employees somewhere before. Good employees. One had been a Manager in a fast food restaurant. They knew how to, could, and did work very hard. Which is not to say the others didn’t, but that these women came in at a much higher level. It was a relief to have two new students who hit the ground running and could handle more responsibility than the others. But at the same time, I wondered what they were doing there and why they were on TANF in the first place.

Marie did very well the first couple of weeks, with only minor attendance problems. With five children, some having recurring health issues, sometimes she would be absent. But this was to be expected. She was a quick learn and wasn’t allergic to or afraid of the mop, either. She and the other woman were my "rock stars," operating the Mexican station of our cafeteria serving line with competence and efficiency.

Several weeks into the program, Marie’s ex-husband, with whom she’d had no contact with in over five years, appears at her home, beats the shit out of her, and tells her to keep quiet or she’ll end up like "______," a man whose murder had remained, we later found out from the authorities, unsolved up until now. She shows up the next day, freaked out, crying, drunk, purple and black from the beating, her face one big bruise. After five plus years of no contact, he shows up and does this. How could she ever feel safe again? After that day, she never came back.

Talk to the left, cuz that ain’t right. August 2000

One of the people on staff overheard two "Social Technicians" discussing vacation plans. The one doing the talking was getting ready to fly to Chicago to be in the audience on Springer. She had been in the audience for Oprah, Rikki Lake, and Rolonda already, so Springer was, of course, fitting, and the next logical step in her genre immersion. When I would channel surf, I would stop on various talk shows, looking at shots of the audience, trying to pick out the Social Workers in the sea of freaks. I couldn’t. The entire audience was covered in the same taint of stupidity. I took some comfort in the probability that not all of them could possibly work in Human Services.

February, 2000

The lunch shift was about 30 minutes old, and although later every table would be occupied, at that moment less than half were. I was bussing tables today, which became much more of a job than we had anticipated. When we began our operation, the only thing we had asked of our customers is that they take their dishes to the dishroom on the West Side of the employee cafeteria. Initially, we put signs on each table with this information in a little free standing plastic picture frame. Almost all the frames were immediately stolen. And because we didn’t replace them, people stopped picking up after themselves. I’m assuming it was because nobody told them they had to. As a result, the Assistant Director and I spent a lot of time on the floor cleaning up the ungodly bullshit remnants of people’s lunches. So filling evidently, they had only the strength to go back to their desk for a full afternoon of sitting and talking without cleaning up after themselves.

There were a number of dirty tables to be cleaned, as there always were. I began with a particularly cluttered table by the window. I had just started cleaning when a woman came up behind me and stood, impatient, waiting for this one particular table while the surrounding tables were clean and empty. "Pardon me for just one more moment." I said, continuing to clean and gather.

"Hurry." She spat, tapping her foot, barely controlling her tray, drink and books piled next to her entrée. I looked at her for a long moment, grabbed a few items from the table, and left, not completing the task. After dropping off the trash, I headed back out to the dining room where the woman was still standing, waiting for me to finish cleaning her table. I turned left and went into the serving area. She finally sat down, pushed the remaining garbage to one side, ate, and left, her trash to the left of the person’s trash sitting there before her.

Those crazy homeless. September 2000

When homeless people become desperate enough, they end up at Human Services. Their reality must be incredibly harsh, facing circumstances and daily humiliations others can’t conceive without actually experiencing them. They project sad shadows, sitting in dirty, smelling clothes, waiting in the lobby for help, for some solution for their life. Pleading in silence or mumbling to themselves or someone next to them, for anything to fill the void. When their name is called, they become a number, and limited help is now on the way.

During one of my frequent trips past the lobby, I noticed a heavily bandaged man sitting waiting for his turn for assistance. From the looks of his injuries, I assumed he’d been in a recent car wreck, as his head wounds were still bleeding through the gauze, looking very fresh. Without stopping, I continued on. The next day, the man came into the café for something to drink.

After buying a large soda, he hung around for awhile, chatting with me, killing some time before his appointment. My curiosity was piqued, so I asked him about his injuries. He said he was homeless and was sleeping by a bridge under Speer Boulevard when three other drunken homeless men savagely attacked him for his money, which amounted to 20 dollars. Nothing, really. "One of the guys tried to bite my fuckin’ nose off! Can you believe that?" He said.

In case of emergency..

The building always felt like there will, eventually, be a mass shooting on site, and lots of people will be shocked and say, "How could this happen?" and others will not be shocked and say "I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner." Lots of simmering anger and frustration in the air, but not lots of intelligence or rationality. People get upset and crazy there, when they don’t get what they want, whatever that is. Lots of Supervisor/Employee—Employee/ Recipient arguments in the hall, voices rising for all to hear.

A full time instructor conducted violence in the Workplace seminars. People didn’t try to be nice. Lots of infighting, lots of big, big egos in Human Services, for such little, little miserable people. And these were the "helpers." Sometimes there were copies of notices to employees about certain fugitives, that, if they were seen on site, to notify security or the police as they were dangerous.

I would hate to see it, but there would be massive casualties if an incident should occur. People would be slow to react. A banger could come in and fuck some shit up. Anybody could, really, if you chill at the main entrance, past the main guards, and can figure out where the real police are before shooting.

People go out the security door on the second floor to smoke, leaving it wide open, with no surveillance camera inside. People in the building make it so easy for someone to come gunnin’, because they’d rather not make sure a door is closed and save lives (or to look at it from this perspective) than make sure the security door is closed. The old Human Services building had bomb and other threats pretty regularly, but no one seems to take the past very seriously. Evidently, nothing will change until something happens there.

Britt..

More often than not, Britt would be eating something from McDonald’s, while waiting in the hall before her appointment, her mom beside her. She had a form of Down’s Syndrome, but I don’t know if that was the nature of her appointment, or if that was really her mom or her guardian. That wasn’t important. Upon seeing her there, happy with love from McDonald’s, I’d always call out in exclamation, "Britt! What’s happenin’?" The initial call of her name always seemed to startle her up quickly, then recognition took over, and she’d smile that beautiful little girl smile of hers as she told me what was happening.

Cell phone mania!, August 2000

Everyone’s got to have a cell phone. Got to be connected…What if someone’s trying to reach me? Got to have a pager, too…

An amazing amount of people on assistance own cell phones. Personally, I hate this modern intrusion of the collective silence. Businessmen, drivers, little old ladies, they all talk like there’s no tomorrow wherever it’s convenient for them. It’s just so rude to subject everyone to your personal conversations, especially when the dolt using the phone tries to hold two conversations at once, ordering food by pointing, not wanting to interrupt a call. "Can’t you see I’m on the phone?" Uhhh, yeah, can’t you see where you are? Yessir, I get it.. You're world-class busy and super fuckin' cool. Would you like the burrito or the hot dog?

It has also become a badge of honor to some. The older woman pulled all three of her cell phones out of her purse, one at a time. Why she needed three, I don’t know, but they looked impressive all lined up on the table. Must be a great rate package for three cell phones. What the fuck. I guess one or two just wasn’t enough. Beautiful lessons she’s showing her kids, don’t you think? How about their shot to break away from the system? Maybe they can call someone to pull him or her out.

Everybody’s got to have a cell phone. I don’t get it. The last thing I want is for people to have easier contact with me. No way--try me at home. I’ll be screening my calls. I am definitely in the minority at the Human Services building. Almost everyone has a cell phone. Cops and guards for security, Social Workers for field work, Foster parents for whatever reason, and almost everyone on assistance.

Payday? Already?

Around the last of every month, everyone in the building runs out of money. Not just the people on assistance, but the employees, who get paid twice monthly. Employees in the building routinely pay for a $1.02 soda by check. They used to pay by credit and debit cards, until we established a $10.00 spending minimum. Some people use change to pay for everything the entire last week. Then the first rolls over, and money from the government in the forms of assistance and salary is handed out, and the long wait for the middle of the month begins.
The first day or two of every month, everyone pays for everything with 20’s or 100’s.