FORTY DOLLARS RICHER/LEMONS FROM LEMONADE

I repost this on top of the blog today because 3 months after publishing the plaintive cry, I STILL DON'T HAVE MY COMMISSARY MONEY FROM MCC! Read on to discover the details of how a federal prison employs one of its inmates for between 6 and 40 cents an hour - and then has the temerity to not give him his money - even after 5 months of numerous phone calls, emails and visits!

Back when I was selling ads for the Village Voice, the bane of my existence centered around complaints from my clients about botched ads. The culpability rested squarely in the lap of the idiots who worked at the Voice almost every time. But that didn't mean I didn't get blamed by the self-centered and spoiled hookers who'd been wronged.

While the slaves at the Voice definitely did have their issues when it came to accuracy and quality control, they couldn't hold a candle to the staff at MCC who worked at an institution which seemingly fucked up where and whenever possible.

So when I stood ankle and handcuffed ready to be falsely imprisoned by the State of New York (they fuck up pretty good themselves), the staff at MCC offered that the money in my account at the prison would be forwarded to Rikers rather than given to me on a gift card which was the normal routine.

My first mind was to say "Give me the gift card 'cause I know you guys are gonna fumble this shit like you do everything else." But I feared that a gift card could be stolen at Rikers (where the paperwork said I was to be imprisoned for an additional 82 days). So I went with MCC's program. It is now seventy something days later and surprise, surprise...the money never got forwarded and I still don't have it.

Calling MCC to chase the situation is predictably, a study in futility. What happens is more than half the time nobody answers. And then when they do, the operator connects you to the wrong extension whereupon the wrong guy (or girl) disconnects you while trying to convey you to your proper destination. Then when you call back? You guessed right. Nobody answers.

So I threw my hands in air and decided on my next trip to the probation office (located just a couple of hundred yards from the prison), I'd go to the booth in front of my old homestead and see if I could get the extension of Ms. Noble - which might facilitate me leaving her a voice mail.

The officer in the booth recognized me and actually got Noble on the phone. Her version of events was that the money had been sent to Rikers and the situation was thus out of her control. She suggested I go to Astoria Boulevard to get my money.

Going to Astoria Boulevard involves my making a special request of my probation officer to leave the jurisdiction as Queens County is not in the Southern District. Mind you, I can go to Monticello without permission. But I can't go two miles east. So I ask "I could call, right. I mean...there are telephones." Her answer: "Oh, yeah! You could do that, too!"

So after running a short errand at the court house pursuant to me picking up paperwork I need to successfully sue the State for locking my ass up because one of their employees doesn't know how to count, calculate or do his or her job correctly, I got home to call Rikers.

Miraculously, a halfway intelligent and sane woman answered the phone within a reasonable period of time. Unfortunately, she informed me that there was nothing on my books (a considerable amount) sent over from MCC...but there was forty bucks from my kitchen job at Rikers.

Now I already figured Rikers wasn't gonna have my money because hello! If MCC has anything to do with anything, it's gonna be a huge clusterfuck. But the forty bucks? That was money I never would have known about if MCC hadn't executed its customary fumble.

Of course, I asked how I could get my measly $40 and she countered with "just come to Rikers and we'll give it to you." Cheap as I am, a request of my probation officer to leave the jurisdiction and then a voyage out to Nowheresville - all for forty bucks - seemed of questionable value to a muckety muck the magnitude of the former Dollar Bill.

But then she added the magic words "Or you can go to any one of our facilities." And that meant the Tombs, just a quick bike ride from my door. 

Having confirmed that that was the case, I rode down the next day and within just a few minutes, a surly, rude old black woman with a phat rack forked over my forty bucks! Yes. Victory! However small! And then I went over to the court house to get more paperwork with which to spank the State for falsely locking up a civilized guy like me.

Bottom line is I'll take my victories where I can get them. Now, somehow I have to prevail on the authorities to find my mother fucking commissary money from MCC. It's four figures. And I want it. And I'm not gonna quit till I get it. Period. Case closed - literally and figuratively.