The day and the life of a corrections officer!

So, I returned to work on Friday with all my lovely youth and found out that in my wonderful expertise, I was working all by myself in the lovely mental health/transition cottage for the whole 16 hour shift (I was working a double so I could get the previous day off). Now, with 6 mental health residents and 7 transition residents this proved to be quite the undertaking, not to mention against policy to have me working by myself (1 officer for every 4 mental health... we were over, and 1 officer for every 12 regular guys, sorry we had 13). So I had one guy in the building under protective custody (his group members from another cottage wanted to hurt him I guess, no one had the insight to leave me an explanation of what was going on with this kid), one who argues like no tomorrow, one paranoid schizophrenic (who hates females, has assualted female staff before, and is angry at the drop of a hat), one sex offender attracted to anything with two legs, two suicidal kids (one how always seems to say the strangest most disrespectful thing and acts two), and several transition kids who usually help out but happened to be on an off-grounds that day. So I sent the little darlings off to school, and sat at my computer, with one kid sleeping in his room down the hall (the one in protective custody was not sent to school). The we had a graduation ceremony so I gathered up my one resident and headd over. Now half the kids who recieved honors were rewarded pizza in another building, so I commented to the kid in protective custody, "So I guess you won't get to go up there for your pizza." To which he replies, "No, I get to go, they told me the other officer in the building was going to escort me up there." Hmmm.. interesting, I have an imaginary officer working with me? Now here is a delema to solve in all of five minutes, not to mention the fact that they just informed me that the paranoid schizophrenic was being released to me.... *sighs* So I left the kid in protective custody in the bleachers (he was surrounded by teachers, no problem, I hope!!!). I then gathered up my brood of mental health residents with the paranoid schizophrenic gaining in agitation and impatience as I looked about for the psychologist with four mental health residents trailing and me trying to keep count of them in the crowd and get back to the one under protective custody now that the crowd was moving. Eventually I explained my delema to the pyschologist who offered to take the kid to pizza, and I managed to some how keep the agitation down and my little clan together and usher them back to the cottage and open it so all could return. Hmmmm... and that was just the start of my day! Luckily it was a good day and I got by unscathed.