stillhomelessinboston
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Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
Recorder says: 12/13/11 @ 10:42 p.m.
It’s St. Patrick’s shelter, last night. I only had a few minutes left on my recorder, so I was only able to record some of the coughing.
It was another guest doing it. I think I know who it was, and I don’t know why she in particular decided to persecute me last night. I haven’t provoked her. I haven’t done anything to her, just like I never do anything to any of them.
She did it all night. If I woke up (I guess I'll put another "no code" here, although I feel like I've done that before. I'll try not to do that again, because here it is, here's my "no code" for that phrase) for a minute out of my exhausted sleep, she was instantly coughing again. It went on this morning, too.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 5:05 p.m./addition @ 5:07 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
Recorder says: 12/13/11 @ 4:55 p.m.
When I got to St. Patrick’s Shelter last night, the first thing that one of the staffpeople said when she saw me was “Oh no. I have a headache.”
When I heard the staff calling me into the kitchen, I turned the tape recorder on and put it in my pocket. The same one who said she had a headache as soon as she saw me; you can hear her ask me if I’m going to behave, and me ask her back if SHE’S going to behave. That turned out ok; she laughed.
Then I went out into the dining room/common area.
You can hear some coughing, and also the toilet flush and the hand dryer go, which lets you know that it’s not a big place. As I wrote before, the door to the restroom is always left open; there are stalls and a sink and a shower.
There’s also some verbal harassment, in the comments people make to other people there.
The second time that the staff called me into the kitchen, they were looking through the log book to try to find out if they could kick me out. I heard them saying “She walked out at 9:00 p.m. at night” about something that happened weeks ago. The only reason I would have walked out at 9:00 p.m. at night would be if I had been getting harassed and couldn’t get any relief from it, or had gotten yelled at by the staff, or had gotten yelled at by the staff for trying to get help to stop the harassment. I explain it at the end, that I was getting harassed in the common area by other guests just before the staff called me into the kitchen again while the staff was looking for a reason to kick me out.
Here’s something that I know happened there too, but I’m so exhausted and get harassed at shelters so much that I don’t remember if it was last night or over the weekend, when I was also there.
The staff wouldn’t let me eat by myself in the stairway, on a chair that was already there, either; I HAD to go out and sit in the dining room with the other guests, which I’d be happy to do if I didn’t get harassed. The dining room often doesn’t have enough room for everyone to sit at a table; I had gone to the stairway because the place was so full that someone was sitting on the piano bench, holding her plate in one hand and eating with the other.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 4:54 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
The recorder says this recording was made on 12/13/11 @ 7:15 a.m..
Mobil Station/Caution cones/“Bad Apple”/Bad Gwyneth and Bad Chris/Bank of America/Merrill Edge/Wet Floor Sign—Blatant and Disgusting!/Feeding America/Burger King/No Code
As I’ve said before, when I’m making a recording, I can’t worry about every word I say. The point of making recordings is to make the process of documenting all of it faster.
I’m an amateur at these things; I’m certainly an amateur public speaker.
There’s no reason for me to be doing all of this if it wasn’t important to me; I HATE looking at and writing about all of these things.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 4:05 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
The recorder says that this recording was made the night of 12/12/11-12/13/11, at 12:25 a.m.
It’s some of what happened that night; sometimes, I actually am so tired, that I fall asleep anyway.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 3:33 p.m./edited @ 4:01 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
I made this recording on 12/12/11 at 9:07 p.m., the recorder says.
I went back to the 2nd floor after I had talked to the police officer and the staffperson. That night, there was a church group in the cafeteria, some people who had shown up to talk to guests who wanted to hear what they had to say. Although I’m not Christian, I thought that sitting there listening to what they had to say was probably going to be better than going back into the dorm, where the coughing had started the second I’d walked in that night.
Near the end of the church group’s meeting, the supervisor that I’d wanted to talk to walked into the cafeteria to get something from the kitchen. When I saw him, I got up and went over to him to ask him if he would try to put a stop to the coughing. I said “It’s deliberate,” and I was so sure that he wouldn’t listen to me that, even though he started to say “OK” and nod, I went on to say “If you don’t want to deal with the fact that it’s deliberate, will you at least tell people to try to keep it down?”
He said, “OK” and he went into the dorm.
After he’d been in the dorm for a few minutes, I heard one of the female guests in the dorm give loud, repetitive, harassing coughs.
He walked out soon after that and went back to the 1st floor.
When I went into the dorm after the church group was over, the harassment started right away, with the staffperson behind the desk in the dorm joining in.
I went back to the 1st floor, found the supervisor, and spoke to him as you can hear on the recording. You can also hear that he said he’d be upstairs to try to do something about it.
He never showed up. If he called the staffperson at the desk in the dorm, which I doubt he did, it didn’t have any effect.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 1:15 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
I made this recording on 12/12/11, at 8:14 p.m., says the recorder.
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I tried to talk to the supervisor at Intake, to ask if he could stop the harassment. There’s often a police officer at Intake; whoever it is usually sits at a desk in front of the supervisor’s office. I didn’t get a chance to talk to the supervisor at that time.
Here’s the police officer at Intake, encouraging the same sort of harassing behavior by other guests that led to the woman hitting me a few weeks ago.
After he tells me to wait to talk to the staffperson at the other desk, you can hear a homeless man in the background demonstrating his knowledge of the larger situation and that I’m not imagining anything.
Then you can hear the female staffperson contributing to my being bullied with her refusal to acknowledge that it’s happening or to do anything about it.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 1:00 p.m.