Shelter Residents Expected To Spy On One Another When Away

Should you become a resident at the Sheridan Community Shelter, you could be manipulated into spying on your fellow shelter dwellers against your will.
I have seen the director haul people into her office and grill them about what another resident was doing while in town, and who they were with.
“Was he with a woman?”
“I think so. We were just driving by.”
“What did she look like? Who was she?”
“I don’t really know.”
“What were they doing?”
“Just sitting on a bench.”
“Ah! Aha!”
Good lord.
One of our female residents had lunch with a friend in a downtown tavern, and was read the riot act for calling public transportation from “a bar” for a ride back to the shelter.
The director fretted over the absent residents, about whether they were having sex, getting drunk, using drugs or causing trouble in some way. Not a very positive outlook.
She once forbade one male resident from talking to another male resident’s girlfriend on shelter property or anywhere else. It didn’t seem to matter to her that the two men were good friends. In fact, the two left the shelter and still share an apartment. I reckon both of them are talking to the girlfriend again.
I often told residents that it was none of our business what they did during the day. “Just be in by curfew.” I never could quite grasp the amount of control that she wanted over the lives of people who could use a boost at the shelter.
Maybe the Volunteers of American Sheridan Community Homeless Shelter could shorten its name to, “Her Clutches.”