Change it up!

(This item lingered a good while in Drafts; RantWoman is posting it  now in order to help tell a different story in another part of her life.)

The good news:

--Staff at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing have been able to rearrange our reception area to open up both more space so customers can access the headphones and more importantly so that people always have two ways out from behind the desk.

--It took a bit of talking through to work out all the details: strong suggestions from police officers,  needed traffic flow, different people's sense of physical safety, visual lines of sight, some other points.  Once we took the time, though,  having the environment be the same but not the same has been REALLY helpful for several people affected by one customer's severe mental health moment.




Reception area rearranged
to create two ways out
from behind the desk
 

The Bad News:
It has NOT been a quiet week at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing and RantWoman has been mainly a bystander.

By not a quiet week RantWoman means:
--a knock on RantWoman's door one morning from one of the people affected who wanted to tell RantWoman about events the night before.

--events the night before as in a customer having a mental health moment, one staff getting cornered briefly in the reception area,  two staffers getting assaulted, the scissors the assailant was carrying getting thrown across the room and then NOT returned to him, and some more similar details before the computer lab got cleared, the assailant left, the police arrived, took statements and arrested the assailant  a little while later at a bus stop not far from the Friendly Neighborhood Center. The assailant did not stay in custody very long but he did getg arrested.

(The slightly worse news: this assailant was one of three different people arrested this week for assaults involving sharp objects. The other two assaults showed up in RantWoman's Twitter feed, one of those details RangWoman has mixed feelings about allowing into her life. RantWoman appreciates being able to avoid problems near her; RantWoman is less charmed about even having to think of some of the info that comes in.)

But back to the friendly Neighborhood Center.

Everyone present at the event did the best they could in the moment.

RantWoman is very glad injuries from the assaults were not any more serious than bruising and soreness.

RantWoman is very glad that everyone present that night is back at work and the computer lab routine seems to be settling down again.

Several people's nerves remain rattled.

The story still needs to be retold for meetings and conversations. It is clear that several people have life experience already that informs what they know of different parts of the process.

There is no info yet on the municipal court page
http://web1.seattle.gov/courts/cpi/

There is a new sign barring the assailant from the property.

Chatter is that the assailant is still staying at a nearby freeway ramp tent encampment. Multiple people ardently wish he would intersect with the kind of assistance that COULD get his housing stabilized and MAYBE even connect him with a computer and cheap internet so that he would not have to try to mix porn with the Friend Neighborhood Center....

Change it up folks!