Blown for Good - Marc Morgan Headley [26]
“Looks like someone screwed up bad!” one of my co-workers leaned over and told me as we watched the crowd scrub the grout on their hands and knees.
“How can you tell?” I asked him—he said it as if it was some sort of ritual that the Rehabilitation Project Force frequently did, scrubbing floors with toothbrushes.
He then proceeded to give me the lowdown on the Rehabilitation Project Force, or RPF. “Well, normally,” he explained, “the RPF do heavy construction or jobs that go on longer than the EPF could handle. They do drywall, electrical, plumbing, you name it. They also do the really super nasty jobs like clean out the trash compactors or manure the lawns. If someone really screwed up on the RPF, then the whole group of them get punished and are forced to do things like scrub tiles with toothbrushes.”
It was not getting the tiles any cleaner, but it was a pain in the ass and humiliating. It was a lesson not to let anyone screw up. It was also a message to all Sea Org members who were not on the Rehabilitation Project Force: “Don’t end up on the RPF!”
He then went on to tell me how they didn’t get a day off. They had to sleep in designated RPF barracks. They could be on the RPF for years or for decades in some cases. They had to run everywhere they went and if they screwed up really bad, they would be sent to the RPF’s RPF. That was a separate RPF within the Rehabilitation Project Force. The penalties and punishments were worse than they were within the normal RPF and one had to get through a certain number of steps of punishment to get out of the RPF’s RPF and be on the normal RPF again. I vowed right then, I would never do the Rehabilitation Project Force no matter what happened to me.
It was my fifth day on the Estates Project Force, and I was done. It was a Wednesday and when we were done studying for the day, I only had a few hours left and I could finish my course. So instead of risking that I would not complete by Thursday at 2:00 p.m., they told me to keep studying and get done today. Once I was done with the courses I would no longer be doing manual labor anyway.
Most of the other people were very surprised to see someone finish so quickly. A few other EPFers had been there for weeks or even months. I had, to my credit, already done a bulk of the required courses before I got there, so that certainly did not hurt. Lucky for me, the few courses I had already done in Scientology were on the list for the EPF.
I was supposed to get a Fitness Board in order to start working at the Association for Better Living and Education International. A group of people would review my test scores, my study record and my performance while on the Estates Project Force and decide if I was fit to join the Sea Org. Veronika Kegel at ABLE International came and met me at the Complex. She was there to pick me up and get me over to ABLE Int. I was done with the Estates Project Force and getting out of there!
Chapter Four – The Landscape is Changing
I arrived at the Association for Better Living and Education. The first thing that Veronika told me was that I would start by answering the phones. I was confused. I asked her where I was being posted. She said that once my Fitness Board was approved and I was found fit for the Sea Org, my post would be assigned. But for now, I would sit at reception, answer the phones when they rang and direct incoming calls accordingly.
Before I began, I needed to go down the street and get a tie, some nice slacks and a dress shirt. Unlike the rest of the Sea Org staff, ABLE Int staff wore Uniform “K” – or “civvies” as they called them – civilian clothes.
She showed me how to use the phone system and gave me a short list of 15 staff that worked at ABLE Int.
Most of the calls were for the Registrars, Dick Story and Tom