Here's your sign...

J's got a new rant about the public in general. OK maybe not the general public, just the public that ends up going to court often. He's been pretty fed up with being at court services. Sitting at an x-ray machine all day long gets REALLY boring. In the four weeks he's been at the courts, though, he's already whored up more overtime than he did in the previous YEAR. Which, I've got to say, is rilly rilly nice.

He tells me, since I've never been in any court in my life, that as you walk in the building, there are SEVERAL signs telling you what to do to prepare yourself for the x-ray machines.

• Every package must go through the x-ray.
• No weapons of ANY kind, including but not limited to the following: x y z.
• No food or drink past the x-ray.

Apparently the court-going public is illiterate. Every day, he gets some a-hole with a pocket knife who wants to beg and plead and insist that it's not a concealed weapon, it's shorter than 4 inches (where the public got the 'cutoff' for knives, I will never know), it'll stay in the pocket, on and on. Or insisting that his water isn't a bomb so he should be able to bring it in. Yesterday it was an idiot frat boy who wanted to bring his Gatorade in. J says to him, patiently, "You can't bring that in here." Now, if it'd been me, I'd have said something snarky like "Those signs aren't up for my health. You just walked by your first two warnings."
His a-hole frat buddy says "Can I bring my pencil and paper in?" being a smartass, like it's J's decision what you can and can't bring in to the courthouse. Now I can't remember what his response was, but it was basically pointing the kid at the signs, and telling him not to be a smartass. The kid responds "Oh I wasn't trying to be sarcastic, I just wanted to make sure I could bring them in." Listen folks, if you're going to be a smartass, at least stick it through. Don't backpedal when some authority figure calls you out on it. Apologize, or keep being a smartass. Don't wuss out and try to lie your way thru.

J also told me a really funny story about an inmate who was being a super-jerk in court yesterday. He kept talking out of turn, and during the recess kept talking to people he wasn't supposed to, and making faces at the judge. J said the guy was acting like a child so much, he almost turned him around to face the corner and put him in time-out! I told him if he did that, I wanted pictures.