I hated working in my prison’s cookhouse.

We worked eight hours a day, seven days a week, for pay ranging from $3 to $5.50 a day, depending on your role. If I worked a kitchen job on the outside here in New Jersey, I would be making a minimum of $15.92 per hour. 

I wanted to quit, but I felt I couldn’t. It wouldn’t look good on my institutional record, and I needed the money.

“We come in here every day of the year and we’re expected to perform at our best doing multiple jobs for $100 a month,” my co-worker Marquise Brown told me last summer.

The cookhouse was filled with challenges, many of which stemmed from the outside staff who managed the place.

I felt like they rarely provided thorough instruction or ensured the food was high quality. And I rarely saw them eat the food. So, maybe that’s why I felt like they didn’t seem to care if it was bad. I remember times when incarcerated workers complained about food smelling foul only to be told by the instructors that the food didn’t smell bad to them. “Serve it,” they told us.

But there were some exceptions. One instructor told me that when he signed up to work the job, he believed that he was coming to teach incarcerated men culinary skills that they could use when they returned home. He told me he was disappointed when he learned that his role as a manager wouldn’t allow him to do anything other than maintain the status quo.

So, it was on us, the incarcerated staff, to make sure the cookhouse functioned and everyone ate.

I worked the lunch and dinner shifts in the production area, where we prepared, cooked and assembled food. Two men cooked starches, one guy cooked vegetables and I cooked the main portion of the meal. Another guy prepared diet meals, and another prepared vegetarian meals. 

Three guys collected trash and unloaded the truck when it arrived with food and supplies. There were four guys in the pot room, the designated area for cleaning and storing most of our cookware. Two of us also loaded carts with food trays for people who didn’t come to the cafeteria to eat.

But that wasn’t nearly enough people to make things run smoothly. Everyday we were understaffed by four to five workers. That left me doing multiple physically demanding, even dangerous, jobs every day.

For example, I had to pick up a couple dozen 40-pound bags of food and place them into boiling water, which often splashed and burned me. Then I had to take the bags out of the water, cut them open and pour the hot food into 6-inch pans, before placing the pans on the food carts. Because I worked around 50 hours per week, I was barely able to use the phone or go outside to enjoy the fresh air. 

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, all workers were supposed to help break down pallets filled with inventory: 50-pound bags of rice, sugar and flour; cases of chicken, beef and fish; cases of canned goods and condiments; and cases of supplies such as bleach, trash bags and soap. Then we stacked and stored these items in freezers and boxes.

I also frequently helped with the trash or in the pot room. When it was time for dinner to be served, I had to help on the serving line. I didn’t like working the line because the instructors forbade us from serving guys extra food when they asked for it. Sometimes I protested, but as a training instructor once rebutted, “I’m just giving them what they’re supposed to get.” The extras got fed to the dumpster instead.

But it wasn’t all bad though. We kitchen workers sometimes got food that wasn’t available to the general population. That allowed me to save money by not having to buy extra food from commissary. Sometimes I was even able to feed a friend.

After a shift, I came back to the cell so exhausted, my body aching. I had little energy to do much else — and certainly not the things I most enjoyed, like writing. 

The worst part of all this was that it seemed like I had no way out. If I refused to work, I would be fired and given a disciplinary charge for refusing an order. A disciplinary charge could land me in solitary confinement. And it could result in me losing my single-cell status, which affords me more privacy and safety. And changing jobs, especially to a more desirable one, can have several hurdles in prison.  

But recently, when a more desirable job opened up, I lucked out. I heard about the opening for a custodian in the school area, and I immediately started talking to people who could vouch for me with the officer who worked the school area. The officer asked me to fill out a job change form, and about a month later I landed the job.

Now, I work six hours less than I did in the kitchen and have more time to spend on myself. I took a pay cut of $60 per month, and I no longer have the benefit of extra food for me or my friends. But at least I don’t have to deal with the dysfunction and stress.