Noah Cicero - Go to work and do your job. Care for your children. Pay your bills. Obey the law. Buy products.

Every day the residents had lunch. Because the residents were criminals, a guard had to watch them eat and make sure that they took the correct amount of food.

The cafeteria was small with thirty round tables and five chairs at each table.

On that day the residents were having hamburgers and green beans.

There were two pictures above the meal line demonstrating how the food should be placed on the plate. The hamburger patty had to on the plate next to the two buns. The ketchup had to go on another part of the plate. The burger was not allowed to be made for the sake of efficiency. I had to stand by the buffet and yell at the residents if they made their burger and didn’t follow directions.

Everything went fine until Joe Newsome tried making his hamburger while still in line. “Joe,” I said, “you can’t make your burger. You have to bring the items to a table and assemble the burger there.”

“What? Why can’t I make a burger while in line? This is stupid.”

“Joe, you are written up. This will be logged.”

Joe just looked pissed.

At one point Heidelberg entered the cafeteria. She stood by the water machine and watched.

My whole body tensed up. I knew I was being watched. Everyone in the cafeteria starting having a mental breakdown. It was terrible. Workers and residents alike, we all knew that she was watching every one of us, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce on us, to reprimand us. She wanted us to do something wrong, she needed us to do something wrong, she wouldn’t leave until somebody did something wrong. But who would it be? Who was going to be the one to piss off Heidelberg?

Somebody dropped a burger patty on the floor. It looked bad being there so I asked one of the residents to get a broom and clean it up. The resident came over and swept it up.

Heidelberg left immediately after. I watched her leave and sighed with relief. It didn’t seem like anything bad happened in the short time she was there.

After lunch, Heidelberg found me and said, “My office, please.”

I felt horrible. I wanted to cry. What did she want from me? I couldn’t figure it out.

I sat in her office and tried to emotionally prepare for what was to come.

“Do you remember when the burger patty fell on the floor?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Don’t tell kitchen workers to sweep up burger patties so close to the buffet station. It could cause dust to come up from the floor and land on the food.”

What was she talking about? I had worked at several restaurants in college and never heard that once. That was completely absurd.

“I don’t trust you, Mike. I don’t think you believe in NEOTAP.”

“I believe,” I said, almost having a panic attack.

“You need to prove to me that you believe. You almost killed several residents today using a broom so close to the food.”

I didn’t know what to say. I had no idea what to say to Heidelberg. What she was saying was so strange, so impossible to respond to, but I just nodded and said, “Yes, I will never do that again.”

“Good.”

Then she dismissed me. I left feeling extremely confused.

I did another body count in the morning. Two more people had disappeared. I didn’t ask anyone where they went. I knew I would not get an answer. I didn’t know what I was doing at NEOTAP. The place seemed terrible to me. Heidelberg wouldn’t stop yelling at me, I was constantly being watched, people were disappearing, nobody ever talked about anything but fantasy football. I was in a constant state of tension. All my muscles were taut. I felt like crying all the time. But I wanted health care. I went to college and wanted to make at least eleven dollars an hour. If I quit, I was going to have to go back to restaurant work. Nobody was hiring political science majors. I thought when I was in college that I could at least get a job in an office, but I was told I needed six months of experience to do office work.

Monica and I couldn’t even talk openly at work because it was against the policy of NEOTAP that NEOTAP employees speak to residents or each other outside of NEOTAP. Unless your conversation with another employee was about fantasy football, you were likely to get called into Heidelberg’s office. I woke up five days a week at six in the morning completely dreading going to NEOTAP. I would wake up and just hate my life. I would take a shower, put my clothes on, and drive the forty minutes to work. I would get to work and live in a constant state of fear that I was doing something wrong, then go home and do nothing at all. Sometimes I would lie on the couch for two hours alternately staring and taking naps to get NEOTAP out of my system. Then I would eat and eventually go to sleep. I didn’t even bother calling my friends. All I could think about was NEOTAP and how I needed to behave properly at work for $11.30 an hour.

One day Imad came over to me and said, “Let’s do mail.”

I went over to the stack of envelopes and put them in little boxes. Every resident had their own box. After I completed putting the mail in the boxes, residents would come over and ask me for their mail, and I would hand it to them. But Imad was there.

Charlie Palmer came over and said, “May I have my mail.”

I got up to get it and Imad said, “No.”

I stood there looking at Imad.

Imad said, “Go sit down, Charlie.”

I stood there for a second and then sat down.

Imad had a shit-eating grin on his face.

Charlie Palmer stood wearing a battered San Diego Chargers hoodie and a ripped pair of blue jeans, looking dejected.

There was no reason to not give Charlie Palmer his mail.

I was sitting next to a computer and looked up Charlie Palmer’s profile:

Age: 47

Crimes: Charlie Palmer has four DUIs. He has been to court-mandated rehabilitation programs for drinking and refuses to stop drinking.

Education: Graduated high school.

Beliefs: Charlie Palmer doesn’t believe in working. He has lived at his mother’s house all his life. He has never married or had children. He has not held a job since 1998. Since then he has been living strictly off his mother. He is emotionally immature and confused by grownup activities. He confesses to drinking beer every day of his life.

Special Things:If he is yelled at, he will start crying.

I looked at Charlie Palmer. He was a sad piece of shit. When my father was forty-seven he had a wife, two kids, a house and a career. Charlie Palmer had nothing. Charlie Palmer had spent his life living off of his mother, but of course his mother may have trained him to be like that. His mother might have been the queen of enablers. She might have enabled all of his lazy behavior because she didn’t want to be alone. But the question that kept occurring to me was this: did Charlie Palmer really deserve not to get his mail, to be power-tripped by Imad because of DUIs? Did he deserve to be put in a treatment facility for six months where everything he did was watched and monitored? He was an alcoholic, not a violent criminal. I looked at Imad. Several more people came up and asked for their mail and he said no. He didn’t care. He thought it was all funny. Charlie Palmer was a sad sack of a human being. There were a lot of rich people who lived off their parents’ money and everyone thought they were awesome. There was a show on called Keeping up with the Kardashians, which was about rich kids who spend money all day. They made some of their own money, but they would have never made it without their rich parents helping them with their money and social connections. No one considered them bad people. I couldn’t figure out the truth. The contradictions were making my brain grow tense and overworked. I wanted to leave, go home and sleep. But then I thought about getting health insurance and I just sat there.