staff infection part 2

Where was I?
Ah yes… my job.
There was a time, not so long ago,
when I ended my workdays more energized than when I began.
I really loved every moment I spent at work.
These days, however, I’m often exhausted before I ever leave my house.
I am not sleeping well, I’m eating strange things at strange times,
and I’m cranky, sluggish, frustrated and drained.
I know that the social service fields suffer a huge turnover.
People burn out and are no longer able to meet the enormous demands of their jobs.
Trauma, tragedy, ignorance and poverty can be soul-crushing.
And when you spend your days offering support to human beings
that have fallen through the cracks in the cracks of the basement of life,
the endless, yawning need is overwhelming.
Yet, all of that – exactly that – is what fuels and sustains me.
I genuinely love tilting at windmills; rising to the occasion
is a meaningful goal that makes the rare victories so sweet.

The basic facts of my job are these:
I work ridiculous hours for a ridiculous wage, in a building that should be condemned.
On any given day, I spend at least 8 hours being referee, nursemaid, policewoman,
counselor, parole officer, mother, paralegal, reference librarian, cook janitor,
teacher and more to roughly 16 people ages 1 to 41. I have at my disposal
an aged printer/fax machine, a local-service only phone, a flashlight, some NA
and AA literature and a first-aid kit.
There is a huge protocol manual (5+ years out of date), a “handbook of rules
for clients” (which I cannot use my own experience or knowledge to enforce),
and miles of paperwork I must fill out and complete each day so it can go
into files that few people will ever see. I deal with issues and events that can be
so distressing I sometimes hide in the bathroom, where I cry with my face in a towel.
I can handle the lousy conditions of my workplace and the wide-ranging demands
of all the clients that I serve. I can deal with the concepts of futility and neglect –
I can even handle having to buy my own supplies….
What I cannot stand, what is bleeding me dry,
is the gray ceiling of mismanagement
and all the anger, distrust and misery it creates.

And here is where my tale of woe always has to stop, because to vent
in any meaningful way, I need to be specific. But my work is totally
confidential; I can only vent openly with…the very people who are
(and are creating) the problems.
Which is just not going to happen.

So, instead I will close this blah-g with something I can bitch about: rodents.
Baby possums to be exact; they have invaded the building.
They are so super cute with their soft little petal-shaped ears and their bright
little black-button eyes. They look like cuddly bedtime toys - until they open
their little mouths revealing rows of teeth that look like razor blades.
Last night, as I was doing paperwork, I heard an odd noise and looked up to see
the most aggressive baby sitting in the hallway, eating a piece of paper.
After an awkward chase involving brooms, trash cans, some Cracker Jacks and a lot
of shrieking, we got him into a plastic bin. I slapped a lid on him , put him in my car
and took him out to the woods near my house. I know it was likely a bad idea, but I had
to try and save him from poison or the alley cat that has been chasing he and his siblings
around in the alley out back.
I worried all the way home about predators he might encounter – the coyotes and the cougars, and any number of owls. He was perfectly snack-sized, and completely unused to the wild, but I knew that his options back in town were pretty slim to none.
As I was letting him loose I noticed that he had Cracker Jacks stuck all over him, and I felt like I was tossing him to the lions. Like: Hey, look at him! He’s not only tasty – he’s frosted!
I hope he can make it, or that I never know it if he can’t.

This is why I make the little bucks.
It’s not fair, but somebody has to do it.

bs