lördag 18 juli 2015

I'm not made for this......



After working in Home care for about a month, I have to admit for myself that I am not made for this.
Various reasons make that I feel that way. Let's see if I can explain.
In my working life at the police I have been dealing with all kinds of people, young, old, criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill, respectful and respectless people
Back then I already felt it hard to have to deal with elderly people. When I got the offer to work in home care with the elderly I, of course, had my doubts, but was also thinking that I should at least give it a try. Maybe with the years I had grown a little, you never know.
Well...... I thought wrong. I find it extremely hard to keep my patience when they start nagging about things I can not do anything about. It gets even harder when I try to explain that and they just don't want to listen and keep getting more and more on my nerves. I have kept my cool so far, but don't know how much longer I am able to.



Of course not all the elderly nag. There are also cases where the person in question is the sweetest, but where the visits are so emotionally charged that I have a hard time letting go. When a 94 year old woman starts to cry because she can't find things in her own house because "they" have put it somewhere else....... where "they" is us caretakers, ........ where I see people just lying and waiting for the end to come on a daily basis. Where people with various forms of dementia don't have any control over their thoughts or emotions. In those cases I have a very hard time to let it go when I go home at the end of the day. It just keeps going through my head, how sad these situations are, without me being able to change it or do anything about it. It drains my energy.

And then there is  this caretaking part. I have no training or education in care or caretaking. Don't know much about sicknesses and their symptoms, yet it is expected of me to give medication, recognize changes in syndromes and symptoms and other medical stuff. I do not feel comfortable doing that without a proper training. And caretaking does also mean I have to clean diapers, empty pisscans/bottles, put special tight stockings over feet that ere affected by various diseases and very untasteful looking. Now I do have 3 children and changed a lot of diapers, but that is nothing compared to wiping an elder's buttocks or emptying a tupperware container with morning pee. Or cleaning up a bunch of snot after a terrible sneeze.
I have dealt with drug addicts going cold turkey and homeless people that hadn't seen a shower in half a year ( or longer), but this is worse, this gives me terrible vomiting urges.
And everything is done under pressure of time. I have about 7 to 9 visits a day, all on a tight time schedule, where traveling time between "clients" are calculated behind an office desk on google maps with no traffic indicators taken into consideration. When google maps says it takes 9 minutes without traffic, then we are supposed to get from A to B in 9 minutes with traffic. so basically you go in overtime every single day, or you have to take time of from your clients. Either way..... not good
I just have to face it, it takes a special kind of person to do this kind of work. And I am not one of them.

Then there is this other thing........ me and bosses, we do not match really well apparently. At least not with the last two. On this job, after having had a lousy introduction of one day, I went out alone for a couple of days. Then I had a day off to get my eyes examined ( I'll spare you the details of the why and how) and the morning after I woke up with an exploding headache. I took some pills and thought about going to work anyway, but since I had double vision I decided not to hop in the car and take all the risks in traffic. I had to search to find the number to call,  to call in sick at work. (remember my intro, well nobody told me anything about anything of those kind of things) when I called it was just after seven and I was supposed to be there at eight. I did realise I was a tat bit late, but what I did not expect was to be yelled at by my boss. I apologized a dozen times and even offered to come in and start the rounds so that they had the time to find someone to take over after me, but all she did was yell. But I got to stay at home, but without the usual "hope you get well soon" wishes of course.
I didn't feel well before I called, felt much worse after. This is not the way to treat your personnel in my opinion. But it gets worse, The next day she rang again and started questioning my work ethics, said she had a feeling from the beginning that she was going to have problems with me, that she was making calls all around to search for personnel so that her permanent employees could have their holiday and she had worked with personnel in many years...........
Now she probably forgot she wasn't dealing with an 18 year old scared girl but with an actual adult with a little bit of life experience (note the sarcasm.....).
So I countered, that if she had bad feelings about me from the start, she shouldn't have hired me in the first place. That if she was looking for personnel this late for the holidays, she should be thankful for every single person that wants to help out. And that the simple fact that she has worked with personnel in many years not automatically means that she's good at it........
Maybe I should not have said that ........... but on the other hand .... why not, the truth must be said, even if it hurts.
But you do understand that this is not a good basis for a healthy Boss/Employee relationship.


All this combined made me decide I can't go on in with this job, for my own sake.
I have worked a job I hated for the last couple of years and do not want to go their again. It's not good for my health or for my family. And thus I had a civilized conversation with my boss, where I explained all of the above and told her I wanted to quit.
She understood and agreed it was best for both parties, but asked if I would be so kind to stay untill she had found someone to replace me. Now I am not the worst person in the world so I agreed to that. Even if it takes longer then expected...... I'll be working until the end of the month.....

So back to application letters and CV's and hoping I'll find something on my path that suits me better.
In the mean time I will be putting my energy in my creativity and let that flow free. It sometimes gives surprisingly good results.

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