Today was my first day back at placement after a week off, unexpectedly I did not feel as anxious as I thought I was going to; I think this is because I am coming back to familiar faces. It feels like I have been here for longer than 7 shifts which is good because it means that I have settled in well. I feel that I have made positive relationships with the people that work here, and I hope that they think about me in a positive way.

Today was a busy day, food was coming out of the kitchen really slowly and a prisoner got out of their seat to come and complain; this is against the rules to the prison officers quickly jumped on this and ordered him to sit back down. At this point, his order was 3 from the bottom and I still had to do 6 orders before getting to his. This stressed me out a bit and made me panic, I am a massive overthinker so I was worried about whether he would say something or shout at me when I took his food over- fortunately when I took the food over he was well mannered and actually apologised for shouting. This made me feel slightly better, but I feel like it wouldn’t of even happened if I did my job quicker.

I was working with someone called Carol today, I was pre-warned about her being lazy and that she often comes out with “I am a volunteer, until I get paid I will do the bare minimum”. I do not agree with this attitude, but she has been there for 16 years and is a lot more experienced than I am so I thought I would take a back seat and just do what I am told. I found that she liked to complain a lot about the shortcomings of Choices Consultancy, she also did not hold the visitors, prisoners or prison officers in high regard.

At the end of the day she told me I could leave early and that she would cash up and do the cleaning, so I got to finish 30 minutes early which I was grateful for due to working the previous night; it meant that I could get the earlier train. Overall, today has been ok, but I would of preferred to work with someone else.